United and Southwest Airlines
Because I travel so much I tend to observe some things that might be applied to the average traveler. One such thing is how much effort it takes to bring a plane to a gate, followed by all the activities necessary to have that plane back in the air again very quickly.
My understanding is that it takes about forty-five minutes for United Airlines to make that transition. That time includes unloading and loading the baggage, fueling, draining the airplane’s lavatories, the pilots’ post- and pre-flight checks, the flight attendants’ preparations, the security checks, the safety checks – a good number of people work on those details in order to turn around the plane as quickly as possible. In fact, they turn it around faster than the plane gets up in the air. Their efficiency determines how profitable the airline is.
That’s one reason Southwest Airlines is so profitable. Their time to turn around an airplane is only twenty-two minutes. My understanding is that Southwest Airlines looked at how many people it takes to turn around an airplane and are doing it with 25% fewer people, not because those people weren’t important, but because they realized they could be more efficient. They took those jobs and turned them into customer service positions so that the customers – the end users – would feel more comfortable with the airlines, and Southwest Airlines is enormously profitable.
Southwest Airlines is also profitable because it doesn’t have hubs. If I fly United from the West Coast to the East Coast, I normally have to stop in Chicago or Denver and change planes. You don’t do that with Southwest; you fly point to point – no hubs. It allows for more efficient use of the airplane and the personnel.
As you read this post, you may be thinking it is a lot of business babble, but I think there is a lesson for us to learn – that sometimes old patterns get in the way of new ideas. Someone thought differently about travel. Someone thought differently about a plane being prepared for a new fight. As we adjust to our changing culture and our changing economic situation, we have to think in new and different patterns to accomplish the same thing. With United and Southwest, it’s getting planes in the air and moving people from one city to another. With us, it’s advancing the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ in new, relevant, and powerful ways while continuing to do what we’ve always done – reaching out to those who desperately need to know our Savior.
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