Southwest Airlines in Baltimore Case Solution

1. How does Southwest Airlines compete? What are its advantages relative to other airlines?

Southwest Airlines views cars and buses as its main competitor and competes by offering frequent and low-cost flights between urban markets separated by 500 miles or less. It competes by offering only limited services to passengers with no in-flight meals, only snacks and drinks, and no facility to transfer baggage to other airlines. This ensures that it can keep its costs and hence fares for passengers low which builds customer loyalty. Its open, single class seating is highly efficient as it saves on spending company resources on software to sort seats and printing and verification of boarding passes. This saves time passengers spent on obtaining boarding passes and also motivates them to board a plane on time to get their desired seats.

Southwest makes use of multiple strategies to increase its efficiency relative to other competitors in the industry. Compared to its competitors which are faced with limitations and productivity inefficiencies associated with a short-haul point-to-point flight, Southwest has a number of advantages as it focuses on turning aircraft around quickly at gate to minimize the time its airplanes spend on ground and hence save costs. This also ensures flights are on time which increases customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Southwest airplanes have an advantage over other carriers as they comparatively spend less time afloat as they have a hub and spoke system that consolidates passengers from small markets at hub airports to ensure relatively full planes for long0haul flights, saving costs for Southwest. By using only, the single operating platform of Boeing 737, Southwest Airlines is able to enhance efficiency by reducing training requirements for pilots, easing the maintenance and change of spare parts, and standardizing the cleanup, provisioning, and ramp operations. Moreover, by using less-congested airports with easy access to metropolitan areas, Southwest Airlines is able to maximize time of its airplanes in air and avoid disruption in its flight operations.

2. The plane turnaround process requires coordination among 12 functional groups at SWA to service, in a brief period of time, an incoming plane and match it up with its new passengers and baggage for a prompt departure. Please evaluate the plane turnaround process at Baltimore resource utilization, capacity, bottlenecks, information flow, etc. How is the process working?

Baltimore is one of Southwest’s eight mega stations as it offers greater than 100 flight departures per day. Quick plane turnaround at the gate involves a high amount of coordination among twelve functional groups namely pilots, gate agents, ticket agents, flight attendants, ramp agents, cargo agents, operations agents, baggage transfer agents, airplane cleaners, mechanics, aircraft fuelers, and caterers. All of these groups were separated by skills, expertise, and status and were traditionally not known to be cooperative in the U.S. airline industry.