Big interview
Jordan’s Southwest Airlines has been recognised as one of the best employers in the US.
Recent events have only made this even more obvious. In April 2023, for example, an hour-long outage on a vendor-supplied network firewall temporarily halted all Southwest departures. In December last year, meanwhile, the company’s scheduling software wasn’t able to match crew and aircraft effectively enough, ultimately leading to the cancellation of around 15,000 flights. To be fair, Jordan emphasises that these difficulties
weren’t entirely down to dodgy tech. Regarding the December fiasco, for instance, he notes that the “historically extreme weather” made managing flights especially challenging. All the same, he concedes that “modernising the operation” is a major goal of his tenure as CEO, surely explaining the $1.1bn the airline spent on IT in 2022 alone.
carrier that is also low-cost. Nor does this imply the kind of draconian regulation Ryanair flyers have long tolerated across the pond. On the contrary, perks like two free bags per passenger and credit that never expires, suggest that Southwest makes an effort to keep customers content. All the while, the kinds of heroics noted by Jordan can be understood by treating workers properly, with pension plans, generous PTO policies and stock purchase plans all standard fare.
Tech trials
He may have wandered up and down Southwest’s corporate corridors over the past four decades, but Jordan began his career in technology: and how long ago that now feels. When he began at the carrier, after all, the department had a mere 28 staff. Now, that number has risen to the thousands. Nor is that the only place where things have changed.
“When we make a commitment to build a facility, acquire gates, use the gates, we live up to that.”
When producing a flight schedule, for instance, Jordan and his colleagues were once obliged to chart routes on an enormous sheet of paper, spanning 18ft right across the room. It goes without saying, Jordan continues, that attempting the same trick today would be “literally impossible” – especially once you factor in Southwest’s greatly expanded roster of flights, as well as notes on weather, connections and everything else that a modern scheduler requires.
Once you add the way technology shapes other areas of the carrier’s operation – in fields as varied as organising crews and placating irate passengers – all those ones and zeros become even more prominent. As the executive puts it: “Everything you do, every process you run, relies on technology.”
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“As we continue to add complexity and scale, ensuring that we have the right investment to make sure that we are providing our people and our customers with the right tools, so that when they have changes and issues, we can scale and handle those.”
Flying high Clearly, not every problem can be resolved by better hardware. At the time of writing, Southwest was embroiled in a long-running dispute with pilots, primarily over flight scheduling. By the time you read this story, the union involved may finally have voted to strike. Together with a panoply of industry-wide challenges – from wages and staffing to the cost of fuel – you might wonder how Jordan copes with it all. One clue may be the carefully arranged family portraits behind the desk he’s speaking to me from. “I’m a big believer that you have to have balance in your life,” Jordan explains, his southern lilt as distinct as ever. “The old work/life balance phrase is a tough one – because you work all the time. But you’ve got to make room for things that are important.” To put it differently, if warm relationships are fundamental to the executive inside the office, they seem just as vital once he heads home. He says that spending time with his two kids, and two grandkids, is one of his “releases” from the pressures of running a $23bn company. The second is physical exercise. “Indoor rock climbing is kind of my release right
now,” he smiles. “It’s hard to find the time to do it – but I try to make time to do it at least once a week.” A busy schedule surely makes sense. For if the growth of recent time is impressive enough, Jordan has plenty more planned for the years ahead, soon hoping to build a stable of 1,000 aircraft, with 6,000 flights a day. All the while, he says, that old focus on relationships will remain as robust as ever. Considering everything Southwest has managed since Herb Kelleher first uttered his famous injunction, this policy seems wise. ●
Chief Executive Officer /
www.ns-businesshub.com
Southwest Airlines Co.
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