Southwest Airlines in Baltimore

1.
How does Southwest Airlines (SWA) compete? What are its advantages relative to
other airlines?
Southwest Airline is one of the well-known Low Cost Carrier air company. SWA is famous
not only for it’s cheap flight tickets, but also high flights frequency. Moreover, with the
cheap price the company manage to provide relatively good service and satisfy not only
customers, but also it’s workers. There are several things that SWA does differently from
other competitors. First of all, it’s uses only one operating platform Boeng 737, which helps
them to speed up turnaround, minimized trainings for pilots and to be more predictable,
since crew, furnishing, spare parts and ramp operations can be interchangeable. Secondly, in
order to avoid disrupting flight operations and to maximize aircraft time in the air, less-
crowded airports are being used instead of new one. Third, limited service, which is part of
their low tickets price, where only snack and beverages are offered. Lastly, is single seats,
which have huge advantages like: no need for any kind of softwares to sort and assign seats,
no need to print boarding passes and verify passengers and its actually encourage passengers
to come earlier and get better seats. The part described earlier are advantages for the Cost
Leadership strategy, but SWA have several differentiations. Most and foremost is working
enviroment, company invest a lot money and time to choose and train its employee. Usually
newcomers trained several weeks and some have annual training programs. Cross-training
and building tight relationship with others are also very important, not only its improves
quality of services its also help employee enjoy their work. Interestingly, that even though
SWA has hierarchy approach, its empowering operators to make decisions that will satisfy
the customers, so that efficiency of the system improves. Additionally, the company
constantly checks oil price and goes only domestic, short distance flight, which enable to
them to have frequent flights and minimized on the ground non-revenue time. At the end
the company was able to win “Threple Crown” as a company having fewest delays,
misleading bags and complains. Moreover, the company have favorable relationship with
union, which gives flexibility in company’s rules and smooth working relationship.
2. The plane turnaround process requires coordination among twelve functional groups
at SWA to service, in a brief period 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 flows, etc. How is the process working?

Quick turnaround is important factor at SWA,it requires close and fast co-operation between twelve
groups: pilots, flight attendants, gate agents, ticket agents, operations agents, ramp agents, baggage
transfer agents, cargo agents, mechanics, fuelers, aircraft cleaners, and caterers. Usually, these twelve
group do not communicate well with each other and do not have warm relationships. However, as it was
mentioned before SWA does everything in order to enhance working culture and eliminate all
miscommunications once they occur.
In 1990 Baltimore became one of the eight “mega-stations”, it offered 100 flights per day. Moreover, it is
one of the biggest transfer stations which generates 17% of revenue. Dissimilar to other airline companies
SWA decentralize it’s system and minimum connecting time is 35 minutes. Supervisors and operations
coordinators take care of flights into and out of station and ops agents responsible for each flight
turnaround. Another duty of supervisors is identified potential problems and design solutions and
coordinator work is communication with all twelve groups as well as with office in Dallas.
Information: OTIS is a main source of information for tracking flights. OTIS contains information such
as number of passengers and crews, weather, system-wide and reason of delays. In addition to this,
information about gate assignments, arrival and departure times can be available through FIDS, that
usually updated by coordinators.
Capacity: SWA has 16 gates and in average 120-127 flights per day, per shift (morning/evening) three
people are assign: ops supervisor , coordinator and ops agent. The coordinator and agent could see the
gates directly or through 14 television screens.
Bottleneck: Is the time of waiting for connecting passengers and unloading/ uploading baggages. In
average it takes about 9-10 minutes to finish everything related to connected flights. The possible
bottleneck can be gates, when two flights assign at the same gate.
“Hot passengers” and “hot bags” are the terms used in case of delayed arrivals and if passengers
scheduled to make connections. Those passengers usually met with the agents and have priority to leave
the plane first, the same goes to bags which were prepared in advance.
When the plane arrives Fuel Invoice and Cargo Bin Loading Schedule is hung by a rope from the upper
rail of the jetway, connected passengers leave the plane and the new crew is on the way. At the same time
ramp supervisor prepares everything to move “hot bags” to another flight and does other required things.
It usually takes two minutes for conveyor to arrive in the place and 9 minutes 30 seconds for unloading,
plus half a minutes to upload bags. Last part consist of cleaning the plane, while people leaving it,
connected passengers remain in the plane. After, agent retrieved clip and give one to the pilot.
3.
Why is the operational performance at Baltimore eroding? What issues do you identify
that require action?
With increasing number of flights BWI estimated to reach its capacity in 2001 and its bag’s
sorting area already reach its capacity. In addition, the company not only lack of employee,
but also can not keep them, because of the long working hours (16 hours). Even though SWI
decided to reduce the hiring process, specifically for Baltimor, it can result in a low
efficiency and poor internal communications with others. Also increasing number of
connecting flights and delayes make it harder to keep certain level of quality. Also, because
SWI charge only during the issuing the pass, it creates a lot of misunderstanding and wont
allow to estimate exact number of passengers in advance. Lastly, as it was mentioned before
turnaround time had lengthened from 15 to 20 and in some cases even 30 minutes
4.
What would you recommend Mat Hafner do?
Firstly, I would recommend to enhance the number of employee. In order to do so, the
company needs to create incentives to attract new workers and to hold existing one. In
addition to this the training programs should be done more quickly with deep understanding
of each others work. Also, the number of exact passengers should be known in advance, to
avoid empty seats and prepare for connected passengers.

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