Southwest’s LUV Lost

Welcome to We Fixed. You're welcome. The show where we take over companies, you come

along for the ride, and we try to put them back better than we found them.

Southwest stock prices doing great. It's trading near the best levels it's seen in years.

The company's revenues are up. If you followed their financials, it's quite a turnaround.

And yet, it does not feel like Southwest is back on top. A recent Reddit thread with

200 upvotes said, after 20 plus years of loyalty, I won't fly Southwest Airlines.

Another said that Southwest has thrown away all their goodwill in an attempt to be like

every other carrier. Another recent flyer said, this ain't the old Southwest. Another

said, this is not what I signed up for. Another said, I've flown Southwest exclusively

for 10 years. This may be my fair will. Check all the socials of the sentiment is the

same. People, especially longtime flyers, are steaming mad. This is not just the internet

being the internet. People are pushing back on Southwest because it's not what it used

to be. And loyal customers are asking for exactly what they want, and the company just

isn't doing it. But they could. And we're going to give them a nudge in the right direction.

We're going to try and close the gap between financial success and customer satisfaction.

Because when you're losing your most loyal customers with no end in sight, something's

got to change. It's a big one. And Melissa and Chino are not here today, so I've got

to fix this myself. Well, fortunately, I'm not flying solo. I've got a co-pilot here.

Amy is Reenie Huey-Lypton, founder and chief strategy officer of the Dame Collective.

Among other things, Reenie with Senior Vice President and Director of Strategy and Insight

have the agency GSDNM, where she led strategy on Southwest during some of its strongest years.

She's an award-winning strategist and speaker who's helped build global brands, guided

presidential campaigns, and has won gold fies and gold lions, along with other distinctions.

Over the course of her life and career, she's grown from a self-described, cringing inauthentic

poser. Those are her words, not mine. In Tito woman, there's nicks of humor, grit and

sharp strategy. Now helps others find their own unapologetic voices.

Reenie, welcome to the show. It's so great to have you. Please tell us more about yourself.

Oh, no, I'm glad to be here. Glad to be here.

Yeah, so I've done strategy for 30 years in this business. It, like any strategist with

those amount of years under their belt, there's just a lot of experiences to draw from,

which I love in terms of being able to cross-pollinate and do this and ask what if and help my

clients really see the possibilities of what could be. As we all know, in the advertising

industry, once you hit a certain age, they all think women over 45 are wearing crocs with

socks and elasticized pants and we're totally out of touch. So I pivoted and now with the

Dame Collective, I do. I've written a book called My Authentic Voice, which is how to really stop

performing for the system, how to stop shrinking yourself to fit in and be yourself and say the

thing. And I've also translated that into the work I do for brands. How to brands

be authentic and get out of the sea of sameness we see in so many things, which is one of the things

we're talking about with Southwest Airlines today, yeah. Our friends at the airline.

I was talking with someone just recently that we had worked on a project together for Mountain Do,

and they were saying, Rene, and I am blowing smoke at my own ass here, sorry. We should have

listened to you because at the time, which was a couple of years ago, I had said they were looking

for a new creative direction, new platform, and I said, you really should lean into this whole

anarchy thing that's going on with young folks. And I'm just thinking it would have been so good

today, right? They could have like just lit it up. So I'm a big brand of a big fan of brands being

bold, but also authentic. And that would have fit, you know, Mountain Do perfectly for sure,

that the idea of anarchy. So absolutely. Well, it's great to have you here. I'm grounded in

strategy myself. And you know, you have those conversations with brands and you try to save them

from themselves or point out something that's, you know, just on the surface that they haven't picked

up on. And sometimes they say, yes, and you're lucky. And sometimes they say, no, either there's

nothing you can do about it, except talk about them on a podcast, which is what we're going to do.

Sometimes they look at you like you're crazy, which is okay. Which is why I love this show,

because we get to tell them what to do. And that's exactly what we're going to do today.

And I know you've been, you know, you've had a few things to say about Southwest recently on

LinkedIn and elsewhere. And so we're just going to get into it. Okay. All right. So let's,

let's ground our conversation a little bit for those of you who are longtime listeners of our show.

You'll know that we covered Southwest all the way back in season one. And we basically told

them what to do back then too. If you're going to modernize your business, which you do need to,

because you have to make profit, you have to do it in a way that doesn't alienate your best customers.

Because Southwest's advantage was never just price. It was trust. So you have to listen to your

customers who trust you, be responsive to their feedback and keep evolving while making sure that

your loyalists stay on board. At the end of that episode, we congratulate ourselves on a job well done.

We fixed it. You're welcome. But Southwest must have had some meetings without us because they didn't

stay fixed. Silly, silly. I mean, right? Over the last six months, Southwest has moved from a big

transformation narrative to a very public erasing of who they used to be. So now there's a science

seat. You pay more for the good ones. They didn't walk back the baggage fees. All these changes at

once are creating confusion and resentment. The problem isn't that Southwest is changing. Things

have to change. The problem is that the fixes that customers keep begging for are obvious.

Bring back some of the things we liked about you and we'll come back and Southwest keeps not doing

them. And this all came to a head, right, with the Super Bowl campaign, which we've seen called

Boarding Royale. Southwest pre-released it the week before and then aired it during the big game

and to add portrays open seeding member when you could choose your own seeds. So we all kind of

like that is they portrayed it as a jungle survival scramble. People, you know, fighting in each

other's faces and ends with the on-screen text. That was wild. And then followed by don't worry,

a sign seeding is here. Oh, good. Thank you. Right. Because you've had 50 years, you know,

and now your gaslighting has all been to believing that we were wrong. Critics rightfully called it

toned up because it made fun of a feature. A lot of customers probably us included actually liked

and sure there were boarding groups in a little bit of hierarchy like A and B, but you know,

you could just choose an open seed. You walk onto the plane. It's easy and efficient. I'll take

that one. And now you pay more for something you used to get for free and consumers were supposed to

applaud after that ad, right? Thank you for saving us from ourselves. And it didn't feel like a

self-aware moment or even turning a gripped about problem into a shared cultural moment of diffusion,

right? It felt like a joke at everyone's expats. Right. I mean, the thing about Southwest always,

you know, the wellspring of love really came from this idea. We're all in this together. There's

no hierarchy really. People understood that you wanted to. You could pay what $15 more to be an

a list, but that wasn't first class. It was all, you know, class. And it was really interesting. The

Harvard Business School and the University of Toronto did this huge study and found that air

rage is 3.84 more times likely to happen in planes where there is a first class. So class distinction

creates this air rage. And we already know that, you know, the crew of Southwest is now facing,

you know, they were, they were, they were hosts. They were warm and welcoming and funny, but now

the referees are trying to be neutral. And they are on the front line of this anger and confusion.

And even, you know, a lot of the social media was talking about how the cruising confused or

angry or sad or upset. And I think that's really heartbreaking for the people who fly Southwest

because the clapping and the jokes. And, you know, I know that I've sort of rolled my eyes a

couple of times, find them when, you know, a joke, but we still all laugh together.

True. Yeah. We had moments together because we were like you said, there's not this hierarchy,

a class system. There's not this year better than me. There's not walking through that first cabin

where everyone's just sitting a little straighter and a little happier. You know, we're all, yeah,

we're all flying Southwest. And it's also, it wasn't the ultra budget carrier. It's not frontier.

It's not spirit. We talked about spirit elsewhere. It's, it's, it's for the people. It was an

economy airline. Yeah. And, you know, they won the customer satisfaction award for the last four

years running from JD power for the economy airline. And I wonder if that stuck in their

crawl, right? That, oh, yeah, we won it. But for the economy airline, who cares? Are you with it for

you are the ultimate in this one place? And that's, that should be good enough. But here's the problem.

We could just say, we could say walk it back. Okay. You had something good going. But the twist,

the twist to all this is financially Southwest has been showing you strong signals. So the changes

they've been implementing from a pocketbook perspective, they've been working, right? So they

reported record revenue of 28.1 billion in 2025. But with that, the load factor like the,

how packed the planes are, yeah, fell down to 77.2%. And it's down from 80% a couple years back,

meaning the planes were on average less full. The drop off might seem that that percentage might

seem small, but it's a downward trend year after year. And it doesn't seem to be reversing. So,

I mean, that's really really that's the, that's the core tension is that Southwest can make more

money at the moment, temporarily by losing customers and charging more for the customers that stay

stay with them. Exactly. It's classic Wall Street optimization. You know, you're extracting more

per customer. But how long will that last given the fact that with a lot of Southwest slides,

you're having to stop, you know, there's very few non stops comparatively to the other airlines.

Price wise, people are saying, oh, I can, I can do an American or United or Delta for basically

the same price. Yeah, there's price parity. Yeah. Why wouldn't you? Exactly. And the people are

hearing the Southwest, you know, fanatics narrating their leaving. It's not just a stranger saying,

oh, I'm never going to fly it again. It's people you know who have defended Southwest Airlines for 20,

30 years and are now narrating their leaving in the sense of, well, you know, I just can't justify

the cost. They're not this. They're not that. And that is the type of negative feedback that swells.

You know, that really makes an impact over just some random on a, on a, you know, on a social media.

Right. Absolutely. It's not just a little bit of market fluctuation. Okay, a little bit here,

a little bit there. These are the most loyal customers. Not just quietly saying, okay, you, you

separated from what I, what I wanted from you. It's their standing, they're standing up on a table

and saying Southwest, you suck. You know, and everyone's got to listen to that. You know,

everyone accepts Southwest seems to be listening to that. You know, when you see people with phones

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Yeah, I mean, Kyle Potter from Thrifty Traveler said, we're talking about one of the most

beloved brands of all time and they just completely nuked it over a course of the last 11 months.

And they have. I mean, even they assign seating, you can't switch seats.

Right.

Once you're assigned because they want to keep those, I don't know why, the double planes taken off,

you can't switch seats, heaven forbid somebody moves two rows up into the left and gets

you know, a $39 seat versus the $15 one or whatever it is.

Right. And people are used to being able to sort of switch seats on an airplane.

So even that, it feels like they've done more constrictive.

They created another tension point that didn't used to be there.

Exactly.

And they're churning customers, they're most loyal customers.

They're hanging on to the base level of customers and it's diminishing.

And software you'd call that a legacy model, right?

Right.

We're just going to keep people trapped and charge them more until there's no company anymore.

Exactly. And there's precedence for this, not only outside the airline industry,

with like Harley and LiveWire, right? Harley didn't want to sort of screw up there,

you know, the Harley lore and legacy of so many years.

And yes, it's slow to start, but they turned their electric bike into a different brand

into LiveWire, right? And their whole theme was don't mock the rumble to sell the silence,

which is exactly what Southwest has done.

They've mocked their legacy of ruralness together, basically.

Right. And they, with a Super Bowl commercial, they didn't do it at their own expense,

they did it at our expense.

Exactly. Right. We were the punchline.

We were the punchline.

Yeah.

And that does not feel good. That doesn't feel good.

No.

Well, I'll say, oh, when we get to doing like, what would we do?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That'll, that'll come, but we have to earn our way there.

But you know, that's what we're fixing together is should Southwest keep doing what's

financially beneficial, profitable for the moment.

Is that built to last? I don't think it is or is that going to be its downfall?

And if Southwest's actually doing better now, and it got itself out of crisis mode,

who were on the other side of it?

Can't they start doing changes to say, thank you for bearing with us?

And, and can they win customers back loyalists and everybody else?

Can it be more likable? Let's, you know, read to you and me.

Let's bring back the friendly skies together.

Yeah. You know, they on social media, a lot of people's complaints are being responded to.

We're looking into that, but short of rolling things back, what can they do?

Right? And their employees were always their best advertisement, whether it was

the people doing the bags or the, you know, flight attendants.

You know, employees who are happy and, and people can see them loving their job,

create this sense of trust. And again, we're all in this together.

You become friends. If you're flying Southwest, like a lot of people do on a route that you do

every week, you know, you start to know these people. And then you see this happen.

And these people that you've come to know are now, well, A, for them has what's for seven years.

They haven't got raises. They've been installed discussions. And as part of this, you know,

the flight attendants were asked to sort of move their bags to sort of the back of the plane.

And they said, you know, no, that's just going to make it harder for us to get our bags and make

it to the next flight. And, you know, we're all about on time. Takeoffs and stuff. So it's not

just affecting the passengers. There is an internal strife now that can take down a brand faster

than anything. My dad flew for Pan American. And when that went under, you know, all the, I can

hear, you know, pilots, my dad, but pilots, what he talked about it, all the old flight attendants

from Pan American. And when I say, oh, they were, they were probably women, you know, in my age,

60 and above have now gone to United. And there was a huge brujaha then because United had these

young, younger flight attendants are a good looking. And now all of a sudden, you know, you're getting,

you know, 68 year old Betty, I'm sort of hype. He's been doing this for 40 years at whose grumpy

is hell. Right. Now, but you're absolutely right that Southwest, one of their biggest assets is,

and they would say it themselves, they're people, right? And they create the environment, whether

it's dad jokes, when you first, you know, when they're showing how do you buckle the seatbelt,

but they later make us all settle down and be complacent in a good way, right? We all know what

we're here to do. We're all going to write, be in this together for the duration of the ride.

And it's, it's a, you know, it's more than a transactional experience. And it creates the right

environment. If you walked into a restaurant with, with singing waiters, you know, you're probably

going to be in a good mood before long, and you're probably not going to use that moment to break

up with your significant, right? So you get with the program. So up until recently, that had been

the vibe. And now it's, you know, well, what you're saying, and what we're hearing elsewhere,

that's just not. Yeah. So that's part escalates the tension when it's not just your customers

or are telling you condots or wall street, it's your employees. It's your employees. And you get

a sense they're not on board with all the changes. You know, they don't, they don't want to charge

you more for the bag that, you know, you, with these, the bag fees that have been initiated.

And they don't want to be referees. They don't want to have to be the hardasses, right? To

say, Oh, now, you know, put your bag here. You have to sit here. That, that's not what they've

been doing for 15, 10, 20, 30 years. Right. Now the company line is, I'm sorry, no. Yeah.

So, and these bag changes don't all make sense because, you know, now people don't have been trained.

It's really hard to untrain behavior, right? So people have been trained for 50 years. However,

many years that you can bring your, you know, bags fly free and now they don't. So you, you try to

squeeze everything you own onto into a compact carrier size bag and you're crushing all your clothes

and you made it happen. And then what happens, right? You get to the airport and they say this flight's

full, we're going to go ahead complimentary. You can, you can check that bag. We'll take care of it

for you. And it extends boarding time. One line of discussion I saw on Reddit was,

oh, you feel like, you know, 15 minutes to board. Yeah, it was like bam, bam, bam, right?

People would go and sit down. Now it's like 55 minutes because people are trying to figure out

where to put their bags. There's not enough place to put their bags, you know, people who

bored early or, I mean, bored late and all this sort of stuff have to, you know,

and or maybe a group have to find place in the back for their bags. It's, it's a bit of a mess.

Yeah. Yeah. We're hearing about boarding times at a 45 minutes to 55 minutes or more. Yeah.

Simply because of the changes that have been implemented. Yeah. So, and are there, what other

friction points are you seeing? Well, we talked about the seat stuff in terms of not being able to

really change your seat after you've been on. Also, the loyalty program was really sort of,

I'm not exactly sure how it is, but we do know that the loyalty program, the A-list customers

are losing, the people who are paying for that A-list customer are losing basically their perks.

Right. That they had under the old system bins and all that sort of stuff. So, it is not as,

it's becoming hierarchical again. Right. Like everything else. And so between

paying for seats because I think there's four or five different seat hierarchies,

that, you know, there's four or five different seats, paying for bags, you know, the different,

the longer boarding system, you know, what is there that the staff having to become referees

or not as loose? What is there left, quite frankly, of the southwest airline ding your

free to move about the country? I mean, that whole line, your free to move about the country,

wasn't just about fees. It was also about an economy airline and your free to move about

emotionally well, right? Right. You know, we would, when we were working on bags,

fly free, and we would joke about why, you know, oh, I'm going on vacation after, and I have to

pay to bring my clothes with me. It's like, it's antithetical, right? But Southwest,

that was one of the reasons I was in the room with a bunch of other great GSD numbers when,

with Gary Kelly, when, you know, it was decided, okay, we're not going to charge for bags,

and GSD and you better make this work, you know? And we did, and it wasn't that hard because

A, the employees, the bad guys, you know, the guys, you know, they made it fun. We utilized the

people that make Southwest fantastic and bags, fly free, done. Yeah. And at the time,

that was when the airlines were really starting to nickel and dime everyone. It's just because

companies aren't really known for restraint. You know, if there's a way to make another buck off

a customer, they'll do it. So the, but Southwest came, came to you all and said, we're going to do

bags, fly free, make this happen? Yeah, because they were getting a lot of pressure from Wall Street,

you know, for not getting those incremental money. And the challenge was, okay, don't charge

for bags, but how are you going to make up that money, right? And 900 million in extra revenue,

because we didn't charge for bags where people were flying us, because they could save a couple

hundred dollars, you know, that was an extra hotel room. We're a nice night out for dinner,

wherever they were going. So yeah, we didn't, you know, we, GSD and Evan, Southwest Airlines proved

that you could, you know, make money by not charging. Right. Which is, yeah, like a great

example of corporate restraint and pivoting, you know, saying we're bucking the trend,

get that everywhere else is going to charge you. We're not. But it's really interesting that

that came with kind of like a client mandate, you know, we're doing something I love bold moves.

We're doing something bold. And this is going to be a seismic shake up in the industry. Now,

tell people about it. That's that's a cool place to be. Yeah. Are there other, you know, in your,

in your experiences with Southwest and elsewhere too, but are where there are situations like that,

where there were maybe moves that were not the right ones or different types of approaches to

get to what we ended up seeing coming out of. We'll say Southwest. Well, it's a small thing,

but not so long ago Southwest started teasing pistachios for, you know, A-listers, which is,

I mean, so antithetical to, you know, maybe beer nuts. That's what we all want. Yeah.

But of course they did pistachios, which then not only created this sort of hierarchy again,

but then it's like, hello, people are allergic to nuts. It felt, again, like no one's A,

thinking about the brand, thinking about the passengers. And if you're not thinking about the

brand and the passengers, that leaves Wall Street. And if you're only thinking about Wall Street,

that's not a brand that will, I don't believe it will be as strong in the long run as it could have

been. Well, and that could have been a setup to fail scenario. Anyway, it could have been

checklists. And then people say, we'd allergy and, you know, ride exactly. But even that,

and that's, you know, a token, you know, we took away so much. Let's give you something token back.

Let's give the token to the A-listers. To the A-listers.

Ah, heaven forbid that people, not only a list, who could be sitting right next to you in 27C,

because that's where they choose to sit, you know, get pistachios and you get the pretzels.

Right. It's like, yeah, it's a small thing, but it's, but it's, I think it's indicative of how

they're thinking. There was a big pushback on that. But even if they said, okay,

pistachios for the masses or, or checks mix or Australian licorice, whatever your elevator

gets, that's still a token, you know, let's do something to normalize our behavior.

Right. And say, we're all still cooler, right?

Exactly. Here's a little something from us, you know, that doesn't diffuse the situation,

that doesn't get us back to. Oh, good. You are, you are seeing our best interests in mind.

No, I still paid for the bag and I still paid for my seat.

Exactly, but a pistachios. Yeah. Now they probably would have went with the red ones too,

that got the red all of your hands too. So I think it was their cheaper. I think I saw them somewhere.

Yeah. But you know, it's so interesting because it's like all of these things, it's like they've

diagnosed a wound, sold you the bandaid while hiding the knife behind their back, right? Because

they created the wound that they're selling you the bandaid for, selling you this sense of,

you know, we'll fix it with whether it's pistachios or are charging for bags or, you know,

giving you, quote unquote, an easier way to, to board. Yeah. Well, we'll get to our fix sooner or

later or not, but they could have used that moment. I mean, they could have won us back and said,

it's not pistachios. You get, you get a kit, you know, a meal kit of pre pre pre pre market test

products, you know, you get to try it before everyone else just from flying Southwest and do a while

you're there while you're a captive audience. Do a, do a, do a question. Yeah. Help us,

help us decide what you're going to be. That would have been so Southwest. You know,

we're again, we're all in this together. We're trying these things out. Tell us what you think.

Right. You know, riding on the napkins, we'll collect the napkins, you know, just like. Yeah.

And when they created the, you know, the, the legend is they were sitting in a bar and he put the,

you know, the, I'm going to fly from here to here to here on the napkin. And, and people love

that story. People who love the brand tell that story. And they could have done something like that

with the, you know, with the napkin. It doesn't take much with a brand like Southwest who has

all these different cues for you to think to sort of involve and make change not only fun,

but again, we're all in this together. We, we helped to do this. And it was the right thing to

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extra months. Expressvpn.com-slash-fixed. Right. And we probably fall for it. You know, we're

susceptible. We probably say, okay, I paid for the bag, I paid for my seat, and I get to try the

newest flavor of Coke and Pringles, and I get to tell my friends about it. Like, aren't you

special? Yeah. I'm winning. I came out ahead. We really need to change the definition of win-aid,

I think we do, but we're wired that way. Okay, good. You listen. You gave us something.

You gave us something substantial, at least, that got us through the flight, made it more pleasant.

Yeah. Maybe they didn't even cost the company anything. These are pilot studies or market tests.

Right. Companies are going to walk up and pay for a sitting audience that has nothing but time

on their hands to experience and create their products, and give market-give feedback.

And we know the Southwest passengers on the plane are interactive. We know that they interact

with the jokes, they interact with the pilot, saying they clap when they land. They expect

that interaction. Well, can you still, the tiered system, like we all, the A-boarding, B-boarding,

it still was, there was a feeling of democracy about it, right? Yeah, because you could choose.

You know, you said, okay, well, I'm going to get up five minutes before, I'm going to be on five

minutes before I have to check in so I can get A or B or C. People who didn't care, waited,

checked in, let's see, they knew they were probably going to get a middle seat, they didn't care.

Right. At a concert, you know, you go early and you wait to see your band and then you get

off, you stand up at the front because it's, it's their standing room only area. You feel great

about it because you, you planned ahead and did all those things. Right. If you're last, last one A

and you get to the, you stand in the back and you, let's see, you still get to the concert.

Exactly, right? Yeah. You know? But the minute they start introducing, you know,

lotion and balcony and all the, all the, in front row seats are super premiums.

And then put barriers in front of those even. Okay, if you have this many points, you can do this

or you can pay this from nine more centimeters of space or you can pay this for 15 more centimeters

of space. Right. Each of those barriers added a, adds a conflict moment for the staff.

And the trickle down is then, is the staff going to be in the right frame of mind to keep

creating that sense of warmth on the plane? Or is that going to go away too? Exactly. And then

so one of the fundamental questions is, can you have that we're, we're all one big family feeling

the minute you introduce tiered pricing or you paid for that. See, you didn't, you're, you're a part

of, part of the open fill in, you're a fill in. You know, can you have, yeah, can you have a family

type of feeling anymore? Yeah. I think that that's studied by University Ontario and Harvard

Business School really proved that you can't. That hierarchy, if it doesn't induce at least

air rage, it still induces that feeling of either I'm better than or I'm lesser than or I'm not

as important as which never existed before on, on Southwest. What are some other brands you've,

you've worked on or maybe you're seeing lately that have had similar or compare comparable

situations where they change something. We see it, you know, like we heard you or no more fees

or what are some others that you're, you know, like you have another example. One of the things

when I was working on McDonald's, they were seriously talking about going cashless and we were like

the discussion in the room amongst, you know, because a lot of people at McDonald's brought it up

well, but with the agency, it was we have to remember who our customer is. Cashless means cards,

a lot of them don't have that. They're unbanked or underbanked. They use cash and that is a big,

huge part of your customer. If we go cashless, you'll lose them and it's not like there's a bunch

of people waiting who, you know, who only use cards, just sort of come in and use them at

at McDonald's. That wasn't, you know, to make up for especially the people who cashless who eat

they're more often, you know, they're quantity of times. So something like that is, is again,

they didn't do it. So that's saying, other brands that have done things.

What I worked on, you know, general motors, I was working on the escalade, you know, in Asia

and it was like, okay, we're going to take it to Japan and we're like, it's not going to fit

on those roads, right? It is too big for the streets in Japan. They wouldn't be built for that.

Sure. Korea, whose streets were built quite frankly for tanks, can, you know, have

things. It's somewhere, you know, decision making loses sight of reality. And I think we've seen

that in various ads over the time, you know, the Pepsi ad with Kendall Jenner or, of course, now I'm

losing all of them. I should have written them down. But there's a good history of ads that have

really missed the mark in terms of either knowing their customer or denigrating people are

coming off as sort of not funny. Now baby, oh, a baby brand recently was selling all of its baby stuff

with very overt. Is it a, no, it's American with very overt sexual puns, right? And it was like,

have you read the room? Do you know what's going on in America? Let's not use sex

and small children in the same. Let's not ever do that. Ever do that that especially right now.

Yeah. These are good examples. And we see, you know, we see companies that make mistakes

in public. And we see them sometimes go into apologetic mode and triage and say, we're doing it

anyway. Deal with it. And sometimes we say, you're right. You know, let's undo all of it. And

sometimes there's a middle ground. You know, I think that's what we're going to try to get to is

that what's the middle ground? Like obviously, obviously, you're a pro, you're a for-profit

company. You've got to, you've got to adapt. You've got to make industry changes. Maybe the problem

was with the bag's fly free was it was such a great move. It boosted the company for so many years

and it seemed like a forever promise. It should have been a forever promise. Yeah. Based on the

purpose of the brand and the whole freedom, it should have been a forever promise. In the

minute, you take away something like that without messaging it, right? And without getting your

best customers on board. And to say, you know, I just paid for a bag and it felt great. You know,

I saw them handle it with more care. And it came with a sticker on it, whatever, you know,

whatever the excuse is. Whatever it was. Yeah. It just didn't happen. There's a lot of like

Ted from United or song from Delta Metrojet from US Airways. They all tried to create sort of

these economy airlines. They all fail for operational reasons, not because there wasn't the need. But

if you look at Quantis and Jetstar, that is a success story for the ages. As a two brand strategy,

Quantis for a premium full service. And then Jetstar for the economy service. And they feed each

other, right? Because for certain trips, people do buy down for other trips, people buy up. And

you know, they are, they did it right. They they kept the Quantis values. They kept the Quantis

what makes the brand the brand. They kept it within Jetstar, just branded it differently and had

different operational systems. And that's, I mean, duh. Right. It's not that hard, right?

A new airline from scratch, what costs 10 to 50 million, right? That's a small regional one. You

get a low cost with multiple aircraft. It goes up to maybe 300 million. You know, jet blue launched

with 130 million in 2000. Virgin America launched with 300 million in 2007.

So it's like nothing of these days. Right. But Southwest wasn't starting from scratch. They already

have what six, 800 Boeing 737s. They have the the main the maintenance infrastructure nationwide.

They've created the partnerships with Iceland air, China airlines, condor, all those things.

They have gate relationships at every. They had all the infrastructure. So for all the operational

reasons that Ted and Song didn't have, they had the infrastructure in place to do something didn't.

And they already spent massively in this transformation they did make, right? Layoffs, the first

layoffs in 53 years, 15, 50% of corporate, like 1500 people, right? A corporate redesign of the

structure, the booking system, the boarding process, the seats, all these things, they spent money on.

So if they're spending the money, why didn't they go to a dual brand strategy?

And do you think that would work for Southwest? Do you think they could do? Because the the budget

carrier, they can't, you know, we run it to spirit airlines all swear, but the ultra low budget

build your fees back up way. They're in trouble too. Like, do you, though, is the model if we did it to

to prong the approach to tiered strata is the model we're looking at now? Is that the

economy tier? And then, you know, we all have to live with that. And then there's a premium. Like,

how, how walk me through it? How would that work? Yeah. Cornish and Jett start did that. So they could

do it either way. They could keep Southwest as the four year winning customer satisfaction

economy airline, but then they could also create either a separate sub, you know, subsidiary or a

sub brand that has, because they want to start, you know, overseas, they want to start going to create,

you know, that brand for the long haul trips. That makes complete sense to me, because long haul

trips, you do need a sort of a different experience on the plane, right? For anything over, you know,

five hours or whatever. And, you know, Ted, which was a sub red launched, it doesn't need any new

certificates. It launched within three months. They've been working on this for a while. They've

been spending money, you know, and while the sub brand and fashers and cheaper, the brands could

blur. If you go with a fully separate subsidy, subsidiary like Kwanis and Jett star, it takes a

little more time, a little more money, but it gives you also more freedom, which is what Southwest

air is supposed to be all about. Yeah. No, and I wonder if that would help with operations to do the

short hop flights under one one brand, one category. And then do, because they, like you said,

they've kind of bolstered their international partnerships and do the long haul and the handoff

flights as another, another side by side entity, you know? Exactly. And people will still, you know,

if I'm, you know, going from Seattle to Chicago, five or six times a month, I'm going to do Southwest.

If I'm then going to go from Seattle to, I don't know, Iceland or, you know, Puerto Rico or whatever,

I'll take the, the long haul flight. Yeah. The same brand, though, because I know them, I trust

them. And I'm building something with them, you know, how people think about it with their credit

card points and all of that. Yeah. Now that's really funny, because we came up with something similar

for Starbucks when we talked about Starbucks. You know, if you know your order, you're there

of the everyday, you're, you're, you're it's repeatle, rinse and repeat. You got a Starbucks express.

This is our, our creation, but if you want to sit around and listen to the soundtrack and work

for a while, go to Starbucks lounge, you know, and there's different entities that are under the

same family, right? And they're both Starbucks, but it's, it's, you're, you're not backing up the

queue. If you say, ah, when you first get to the front and say, oh, what's, what's in your, your

cinnamon latte, you know, go to, go to the lounge. Yeah. You know, the app was such a disaster,

right? Because you'd order on your way to work, you'd go in there and then there's 70 people waiting

for their app order, you know, so it's, it's sweaty and crowded and wow. Yeah. So if I go to

LA, LA to Denver, you know, twice, twice a week, I'm a business commuter, then I'm going to take the,

the Southwest, you know, though, that we know it now and there's going to be accommodations for

me as a passenger, right? If I'm doing the international, you don't go into Paris and I've got

Southwest as my, my domestic transfer point, um, that's going to be a different experience,

but it's going to be under the Southwest family and maybe we can use some of our operations to

read, to tailor how each of those experiences are and make it more pleasant for everyone involved.

Exactly. And they're not caching in the equity that the old that Southwest created,

right? It's created a halo for them to use. You know, they're not draining it, which is what

they're doing. I'm with you on it. So in a market like this, you know, you talked about the layoffs,

you talked about there could be more, you know, there's always could be more layoffs, there's,

we're seeing it everywhere. But then there's also American Airlines where the, the story is that the,

the unions are the, the, they want to house, they want to, the employees are banding together,

they want to house the president. And I didn't look today. Maybe it happened. I don't know. But,

you know, in a, in a fear-based market where everyone's jobs on the line, do you think something

like the Southwest situation, if enough employees got together and said we want to impact

meaningful change, they started to make the rounds in the, you know, the, the media circuits and said,

we are the employees of Southwest, we don't agree with the corporate decisions, we want new

leadership. Do you think that number one would they be firing tomorrow? And number two, do they

have power, you know, in numbers to regain some of what people used to like about the company?

Yeah, I don't want to talk about both sides of my mouth, but I do believe they have power. They,

they flexed a little bit when they wanted the flight attendants to sort of put all their bags

in the bag. The flight attendant said, no, we're not going to do that. They followed the flight

attendants lead, but with the job market the way it is and with all the people out of work,

I have no doubt they could fire a good portion of them and have them replaced really quickly.

I could just see that causing more problems, right? Because there are no crews like the Southwest

crews and wanting to recreate that now without sort of the, the whole brand behind it. I don't

think that'll happen. So again, you just, you continue the, the walk towards the sea of

sameness, right, towards every other airline out there. Right. Totally.

Okay. Well, I think we've got enough to fix this. I feel, I feel calm. We did good here.

I think so. I mean, they could roll, the, the window is narrow, but they could fix it in a,

you know, they could say, you know what? We tried this boy where we made a really big mistake.

We're going to do this instead. They could fix it. Yeah. Well, okay. Here's what we're going

to do, right? We're going to do two companies over time, not tomorrow, because that's just going

to create a more market confusion. But let's do the short hops and, you know, the, the one,

one leg to another. Yeah. Let's call, let's call that a company. I don't have a name for it. Maybe

you do. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that's for the everyday traveler. You know, and then we, we go a little

bit premium just to acknowledge we're doing what every other airline is doing. Yeah.

And you get the Southwest flavor, and we're bringing back some of the joy and some of the

personality that you liked, because you, you know, you were a Southwest passenger for a reason.

They have 837, 37's. They could chop off 50 of those for the first group of long halls,

repaint them, rebrand them, fix some stuff on the inside, and, and, you know, Bob's Drunkle.

Okay. For the economy version, at least, we're going to monetize our passengers and give them

something they like, and they're going to be part of, you know, they're going to watch a show

as a pilot and give feedback to the network. They're going to eat snacks that are pre-market,

and companies are going to pay for the privilege of getting in front of your passengers.

And I'd roll back, I mean, I'd come back with bag-slide free and not pay, you know, and the,

and I'd change the boardy system back. What about free, free transparency? So we've seen, you know,

with ticketing and, you know, concert tickets and, and hotels and all that, you know, you pay,

you pay what you pay. What about that, you know, you bring up baglets? Transparency is key,

especially these days. The amount of trust people have for our classic, you know, institutions,

is at an all-time low. We need somebody to trust, and Southwest Airlines had that in the bag,

so absolutely, make it transparent, and say, you know, you know, as part of our Mayacopa,

we're just, we're going to make it all transparent for you guys, so you know, we're not

gaslighting you again. Yeah, and maybe we all pay a little bit more.

If we all did, do you think that, uh, uh, uh, being able to reserve your seat, you know,

first come, first serve basis, but pre-reserve it? Do you think that would be a good compromise?

Well, that's what happens. That's what happens with A-list, you know, anyway, you,

you know, you reserve the right to join to get on the plane first and choose whatever seat you want.

Not everybody chooses the first three rows, aisles or windows, you know? So if you continue in that

vein, right? I think they only have like the first 15 or somebody can do that. Yeah, you know,

extend it to 30, I don't know, but that is something people are used to on Southwest Airlines. And

again, if they want to choose a very specific seat and have the ability to do so, you know, fast,

then you can do that. If not, you know, I boarded an SD group, you, you get in seat, you arrived at

the same place. All right, so give freedom of choice for those who want, you know, need control and

want the choice. Don't mock us the rest of us for enjoying your open seating policy. It was very

efficient. Feet transparency. Again, maybe we all pay a little more of those who bring bags.

You bring bags as you got an aisle seat. They get good for them. They get an aisle seat. Again,

monetize your passengers. If you, if there's a way to do it as a nice exchange and make up some of

your back fees that way, economy carrier, short hops, you all know where you're there. Do it that way.

If you're going to look like it every other airline for your longer haul flights, do do it the

Southwest way. You know, there are people who sign up for, you know, the online, the digital

research. Anyway, you're sitting in your city on Southwest. You're, I mean, we are Southwest

customers or the Sulta of America. They're what everybody wants, you know, the sort of, so they

fill out a survey on a little thing. They get some miles. The, you know, Southwest gets some money

and you've worked with enough brands and, you know, market research. Someone paid 50 dollars

ahead for. Oh, totally. Yeah. So done. And you haven't for, you know, an hour. Yeah.

Couple hours. Exactly. You know, yeah. And you can choose not to do it if you want. Sure. Yeah,

don't need it. It's fine. And I'll go, so we'll go one further. So we're going to get an ambassador,

someone who's very camera ready, you know, who's an actual Sprone Southwest flight crew.

Uh-huh. Not going to be Betty who's burned out. It's going to be someone fresh-faced energy

saying, or somebody who's been there for a while and just knows it by heart. It's one of those.

Right. Those, those flight attendants who get on and are funny. Yeah. You know, online. And yeah,

one of those women or men and maybe a baggage handler or a group. Oh, yeah. But somebody

who represent this Coke coalition, maybe they've got a petition, you know, a petition with signatures

and shopping in the thousands and they say, look, that's the, that's the corporate face of the

company. That's one, one voice in this equation. Here's where you're not hearing from. These are us.

We dissent. We don't, we don't, we're not following with, you know, and like I said, they,

they make the media rounds. They're a fresh face. They, they have tons of energy. They want what we

want. You know, and we're going to maybe align more with them. Then with, with the corporate overlords

that are saying, you know, we're right. We need more money, you know, for Wall Street. Yeah.

Right. Right. And I, I'll say I own a tiny insignificant amount of selfless stock. So if a stock

does well, like that tiny part of me, it could, it could go up, you know, 10 times. It's not going

to change anything in my life. But that tiny part of me is like, great. Good. They're doing good

as a company. But the rest of me and exceed, but they can succeed doing being who they were

and continuing the positive. Yeah. Totally. So, and I think, you know, from within, if they get

those employees that are, you know, like you said, Rooney, if they're fired tomorrow, that's a good

story. For just for saying, whatever one else is saying, if they impact medieval chains, that's a

good story. So it's kind of a no, no loose situation there. Okay. Ambassadors, two companies, getting

exploit your passengers in a good way in a mutually beneficial way with with products and market

feedback, a fee transparency. Maybe we all pay a little more and then we all get what we want.

If we walk this, you know, walked it over to Southwesterns and here you go, did we fix, did we

defuse that attention in the room? Do we fix their situation? If it was Southwest of 12 years

ago, 15 years ago, I think they would absolutely, I don't think we'd be in this position in the

first place. But if we were, absolutely, I think they'd listen. Now with the money people and,

you know, the management they have, VC, all that sort of stuff, I don't think so. I think, you know,

they look at that Wall Street number and that's it. Well, if they, let's do the hype with that,

if they listen to us, would we fix it? Oh, absolutely. I believe we would. Okay. I mean, who,

who does it like a comeback story like this? Yeah. And I mean, there are no passengers like

Southwest passengers who just love that brand and they're all out there right now filling the world

with negative stuff. Flip that around. I bet we'd convert some never Southwest because there are a

lot of people who would say, I will never fly Southwest. Having never flown it, not knowing

anything about it, right? I bet we'd convert that. I think we would. And I think our load

tractor would go up. I think we could do something in a month and I don't think their stock price

would go down because of it now. All right. Southwest, your move. That's, I love this conversation.

Yeah, we're going to we're going to wrap up our episodes. So let's take it in for a landing. And

before we go, I would like to give a big thank you to Rene who you lived in for joining me. Rene,

I want people to find you. So tell everybody where they can keep up with what you're doing. Yeah,

you can find me to the website, the thedamecollective.com. And also it's just Rene or ENE

at thedamecollective.com for my email. And I'd love to sort of hear from you and let's let's solve

the world or let's, you know, let's do cool things. Yeah, absolutely fantastic. Thank you, Rene.

If for those of you listening, if you're listening on the go or you travel, don't forget to take us

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