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An Open Pleading to Southwest Airlines Employees

Matt Metz 09/18/2025

It’s a sad day at Southwest Airlines.

I’ve used and observed commercial air travel for many decades. During my working career, I flew and spent enough to earn many millions of frequent flyer miles. Since retiring, I’ve been serving as a customer assistance volunteer at Sky Harbor International Airport (where Southwest accounts for more than 30% of all passengers), and still fly occasionally. So I have had, and still have, many opportunities to interact with both employees and customers of many different airlines.

Historically, Southwest has had a well-earned reputation of being different from other airlines. These differences included: first-come-first-served seating; free checked bags; single class of service; a single aircraft type; full, never-expiring credit for unused tickets; no re-ticketing fees; and entertaining, happy, and empowered employees.

These differences created loyalty among many (I was one of those), and admittedly pushed away another segment of travel, such as frequent business flyers who look for class upgrades and other special treatment, and large families who wanted some assurance they would be seated together.

Still, I feel Southwest’s business model has created a unique and much more enjoyable and efficient experience. The “cattle-call” boarding process allowed them to turn an aircraft at the gate more quickly than other airlines (remember an aircraft on the ground is earning no revenue). Free bag check encouraged passengers to check bags, rather than carrying everything on board.

But in my opinion, the single biggest benefit of flying Southwest has been that flight crew seem happy and all Southwest gate agents are competent, caring, happy, and empowered full-service customer service agents dedicated to delighting their customers.

In short, Southwest discovered and practiced an obvious, but now rarely followed, philosophy: If you want happy customers, have happy and empowered employees.

Contrast that with most other airlines, who keep stripping away customer service. When at Sky Harbor airport, for example, I would approach an American Airlines gate agent for assistance or questions related to rebooking, delayed flights, possible delayed baggage issues, etc., only to be told (often in this many words) “That’s not my department. Go stand in the (long) line at the customer service desk over there.”

Last year, Southwest underwent a major makeover. This was a direct result of activist investor group Elliott Investment Management. Elliott has forced Southwest to give up almost everything that distinguished it from every other airline: pay for checked bags, multiple classes of service, and assigned seating (which will slow gate turns). Elliott also did the airline’s first-ever layoff of employees.

I hope that all the changes at Southwest won’t damage this one remaining competitive edge: happy and empowered employees. Unfortunately, the first layoff in the airline’s history is likely to go a long way to destroy this positive employee morale and happy culture.

Let me say this to all Southwest employees: Please, PLEASE try to keep that positive, can-do attitude. Fight to remain empowered to delight customers. You, the employees, are the only thing left to distinguish Southwest from the other  carriers, most of which are on a race to the bottom of the customer service ranking list.