RC, Couldn't find VGCP on Barron's online. Is it only in the print version ?
LUV mentioned in today's NY Times.
<By MOLLY IVINS
USTIN, Texas -- Can a yee-haw! airline from Texas find happiness in or even near New York City? Southwest Airlines commences its famously zany but low-cost, high-frequency service today out of Islip, on Long Island. Texans generally consider Southwest their finest export since barbecued brisket and the betting here is that Yankees will like it, too.
It's cheap and it's fun. It is not, however, luxurious. Southwest will get you and your luggage where you're going, but we don't call their planes cattle cars for nothing. It's a mercy that Southwest is a short-haul airline, because you can get pretzelated on their planes p.d.q.
But Southwest does have "je ne sais quoi," as we say in Lubbock. The airline actually has a corporate sense of humor, as contradictory as that sounds. Herb Kelleher, the founder and chief executive, encourages his employees to make flying fun.
If many flights are routine, some are anything but Southwest employees are apt to dress as leprechauns on St. Patrick's Day, rabbits on Easter and almost anything on Halloween. I have heard flight attendants sing the safety lecture as country music, blues and rap; I have heard them compare the pilot to Rocky Raccoon and insist that passengers introduce themselves to one another, then hug, then kiss, then propose marriage.
This could be hard on New Yorkers, who assume that any stranger who speaks to them in a public place wants their money, their body or their time.
On the Friday afternoon "zoo flight" from Austin to Dallas, favored by legislators and lobbyists, there is a regular peanut-toss competition, with peanut bags arcing gracefully up and down the plane, to see who can best catch them (litigious Northerners, watch out). Peanuts are usually all you'll ever get from Southwest in the way of food.
In other ways, too, Southwest will test the limits of New Yorkers' camaraderie. Why, even in Chicago and Providence, R.I., passengers who just didn't get it almost came to blows with Southwest employees.
There's no such thing as a reserved seat. You get a numbered boarding card -- first-come, first-served -- and you are herded onto the plane in groups of 30. If your card number is over 90, resign yourself to a middle seat. There is no place for snobs and nabobs, either: no first class.
Little wonder Southwest has been the most New York-phobic major airline, even steering some flights out to sea to avoid the whole area.
The biggest Southwest haters, however, are the other airlines. Fares always drop as soon as it shows up. Because it does not bother with hub-and-spoke patterns, it can concentrate on the short-haul, point-to-point trips that suit it best.
Part of the pre-boarding entertainment is to watch frenzied fuel, baggage and refreshment crews getting the planes ready in just 20 minutes, less than half the industry average -- and a big source of savings. The seating and peanuts-only policies also lower expenses: The average trip on Southwest, at 446 miles, costs just $76.
Low fares also result from employees whose enthusiasm has made them stock characters in Texas mythology. In 28 years, the airline has never had a layoff or lost an hour to labor disputes, even though it has the most unionized work force (85 percent) in the business. Kelleher, pro-union and pro-employee, insists the customer is (italics)not(end italics) always right. "Goodbye, Mrs. Grump, we'll miss you," he wrote one complaining customer.
Southwest likes employees who break the rules for the right reasons. Its official policy is, "No employee will ever be punished for using good judgment and good old common sense when trying to accommodate a customer -- no matter what our other rules are."
Kelleher himself sets the example. A teacher friend of mine in Dallas wrote him to say that none of her students had ever flown. He sent the class on a free round-trip to Austin, Capitol tour and all.
Employees are praised, celebrated and cheered -- in the employee newsletter, in the in-flight magazine, on the walls of the Jetways. Every Thanksgiving, Kelleher works alongside the Dallas ground crews. As a result of such rapport, more than 150,000 people apply to work at Southwest every year; the company hires about 3,000.
Kelleher is such a Texas-style character that it's hard to believe he was but a barefoot boy from New Jersey who got his law degree from New York University. He was smart enough to marry a Texas girl and follow her home to San Antonio.
A few years ago, he confounded a group of Wall Street types in New York by claiming his two greatest achievements were a talent for projectile vomiting and never having had a really serious venereal disease. For those who prefer more specific measures of success, the airline has been the most consistently profitable and most highly rated in baggage handling and on-time performance, with the fewest customer complaints.
So how will these cheerful Texans who sing and crack jokes while they take you for cheap plane rides make it in Joey Buttafuocoville? It will be an interesting cultural confrontation. If Missouri is the "Show Me" state, Long Island must be the "Prove It" capital. I say, bet on the Texans.
Molly Ivins, a syndicated columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the author of several books, has flown Southwest almost as often as some of its pilots. >
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