The Way Forward for Southwest Airlines Business Plan

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SOUTHWEST AIRLINES Benchmark – Executive Summary: Southwest AirlinesA SWOT analysis provides a useful means to assess where a business currently is, and the right strategy for capitalizing on available opportunities to improve its current position (Henry, 2021). Guided by this understanding, we conducted a SWOT analysis of Southwest Airlines to assess the company’s post-Covid19 financial health and identify viable strategic alternatives for recovery and growth. The SWOT analysis showed that the company excels in its single aircraft policy, which makes it possible to standardize staff training and reduce operational costs, as well as in its low-cost business model, which gives it an edge over the competition amidst depressed customer incomes. The company’s financials point to an improvement in both the Return on Assets (ROA) and Return on Equity (ROE) in 2021 relative to 2020, which indicates improved efficiency in as far as utilization of assets and profits earned for every dollar of shareholders’ investment. This indicates that the enterprise is successfully recovering from the negative effects of the pandemic. Nonetheless, the company may benefit from investing more in strategic airline partnerships and reducing its reliance upon a single supplier (Boeing) for aircraft and parts. Southwest Airlines has not integrated any airline partnerships into its business model in the past, which may hinder it from offering an array of destinations to its customers. At the same time, overreliance on Boeing as the single supplier gives the said supplier huge bargaining power over price, which could endanger the company’s efforts to maintain the low-cost business model.There are two strategic alternatives that Southwest Airlines could pursue to create value moving forward: reaching out to new customers through route expansion and product development by offering better service quality. The first strategy involves reaching out to new customers in markets not served by the company before, while the second strategy has to do with growing the company’s existing market by enhancing the offerings available to existing customers.

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Both strategies would offer the airline an opportunity to improve its bottom line. However, route expansion could result in wastage of capital and resources, threatening the company’s sustainability if the new markets fail to pay off. Further, the strategy would present the challenge of complying with laws, regulations, and cultural issues associated with the new routes, which would further push up operating costs. At the same time, attempts to enhance service…

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…by the desire to serve rather than lead. It is about making employees, rather than profit, the main priority as Jesus commands in John 13:1-20. The underlying idea is that happy employees will translate into happy and loyal customers, who will, in turn, translate into happy shareholders. Southwest Airlines has exemplified servant leadership in the fact that it has never laid down a single employee in its 46-year existence despite facing turbulent times as if often the case in the airline industry (Johnson, 2017). Colleen Barrett, the company’s President emeritus, emphasized servant leadership in the idea of engaging employees whenever there is a problem and working “hard to tray make something optimistic come out of whatever the situation is, and to try to make people feel good whatever the dilemma is” (Johnson, 2017, n.pag). To follow in Barrett’s footsteps, Southwest Airlines could instil the idea of servant leadership by fostering workplace spirituality and rewarding or recognizing as servant-leader champions leaders who exemplify spirituality in their work. Studies have found a significant positive association between workplace spirituality and employee engagement across industries (Rehman et al., 2021). Thus, the airline could maximize its chances of future success by fostering spiritual….....

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