Southwest Airlines Strategic Planning Initiatives

For any company that wants to survive among its competitors, they must come up with a strategy that makes them stand out from the others and grabs the customer's attention. Southwest Airlines has done this in many ways by coming up with ideas before other airlines do to help draw in more customers and keep the customers happy once they have them there. These ideas, or strategic planning initiatives, have shown airline customers and the industry what Southwest Airlines is capable of accomplishing and how far they are willing to go to ensure customer satisfaction.

Although Southwest Airlines only started 37 years ago it has become one of the country's leading airlines. For such a young airline they have become the pioneers behind many of the basic concepts that other airlines use today such as ticketless travel, senior fares, the first employee profit sharing plan among airlines and the first airline web page.

A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 aircraft parked on...

English: View of the front of Southwest Airlines F...

English: Airline Ticket Receipt of Southwest Airli...

A mere two years after the company was founded, Southwest marked their first profitable year and continued to do so for 32 years marking an industry record (Southwest, 2008).

Customer service remains a top priority to Southwest Airlines and they have received many awards and recognitions for their achievements in customer service. One main reason that customers are satisfied with Southwest's service is that the executives at Southwest Airlines made the decision to not increase fees during the tough economic times like many other airlines. The executives at Southwest Airlines have decided to not implement fees for basic customer service requests such as checking in the first or second bag, changing flights, choosing an aisle or window seat, checking in for your flight curbside, offering a snack during the flight, or charging a fuel surcharge (Southwest, 2008). When checking flights between the same cities on the same...