Southwest Airlines: Still Cool After All These Years

05/28/09  Print This Post Print This Post    6 Comments   Popular   Written by Julie Schwietert
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Since its beginning almost 40 years ago, Southwest has been known as the airline that’s a little kooky, a little unconventional.

Rather than conservative, pressed, navy-colored uniforms, flight attendants used to wear hot pants. Today, they’re dressed in khaki shorts.

Instead of boring, predictable safety announcements, the crew tends to make the delivery of even the most rote information an opportunity for entertainment.

The company’s New York Stock Exchange ID is LUV.

It has famously settled disputes by arm wrestling.

You get the idea: everything at Southwest is done with a sense of humor.

So it’s hardly a surprise that this year’s shareholder meeting was more than a get-together characterized by a CEO monotoning a series of boring statistics.

Instead, the company did some internal talent searching and came up with a headline act for the meeting: flight attendant and rapper David Holmes, who was invited to rap the company’s general accounting principles to an audience of rhythmically challenged but enthusiastic shareholders.

Holmes had already achieved some national notoriety before the shareholder meeting rap, which has become a YouTube sensation. The Wall Street Journal and CNN had both featured Holmes’ cabin announcement raps:

But after successfully delivering the “GAAP Rap” without missing a beat, Holmes might just find himself with some new job offers: this video has had more than 22,000 views since it was uploaded a week ago:

What other company can brag that videos from its shareholder meeting have mass appeal (not to mention a 5-star rating) on YouTube?

Feature photo: theerin


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About the Author

Matador ID: collazo

Julie Schwietert is the managing editor of Matador Network. She contributed a chapter to the recently published book, The Voluntary Traveler, and is currently working on five features for Fodor's Puerto Rico, 6th Edition.

6 Comments... join the discussion!

  • Jan Gunter replied on May 28, 2009

    Great fun! Thank you for sharing a bit of your contagious company culture.

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  • Hal replied on May 28, 2009

    Love the rap. Now, if they only had assigned seats on flights…

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  • Michelle replied on May 28, 2009

    Oh my, I hadn’t seen any of these before! I can’t believed he rapped at a shareholder’s meeting, that’s too funny!

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  • Michael Lynch replied on May 29, 2009

    Hilarious ! Southwest rocks !

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  • Southwest is GREAT. I do about 30 rountrip flights per year and I LOVE the airline. They are FLEXIBLE and don’t charge you a ricuculous fee if you want to stay an extra day or two . You just pay the fare increase if there is one. You can even cancel a trip and use the money for another one later.

    I use a lot of stand by tickets currently, but southwest is always my back up plan because of their awesome flexibility. An airline who gives a shit ….. what a concept. I keep waiting for them to change their policy or something, but they haven’t yet. ;)

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  • Hal :

    You actually prefer seat assignments? They always seem so silly to me when airlines have them. I really prefer the open seating on SW . You just take what’s open. Sit next to someone your age who looks friendly if you are feeling chatty. Sit next to a sleeping old person if you are feeling ornery ( this is usually me … finding the quietest looking person to sit next to ).

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