November 4, 2003
Southwest Legend Herb Kelleher
Lights Up McCombs Audience
If Herb Kelleher ever tires of guiding the airline he co-founded more than 30 years ago, he might consider taking his own show on the road. The venue: college campuses.
The legendary executive chairman of Southwest Airlines, known for his candid, sometimes earthy, and often funny commentary, brought more than 350 students, faculty and business people to a standing ovation at an October appearance at The University of Texas at Austin. His one-hour “Captains of Industry Interview” with BusinessWeek Managing Editor Mark Morrison followed a day-long session on “Restoring Corporate Integrity and Public Trust,” sponsored by the magazine and hosted by the McCombs School.
The 72-year-old Kelleher recounted the airline’s start as an intra-state carrier, its struggle through the lean early years, and its prescient emphasis on employee and customer relations. “I always felt people come first,” Kelleher said. “If you treat (employees) right, they will treat customers right and people will come back, and shareholders are happy.”
Soon after Southwest began flying in 1971, it faced a choice of laying off employees or selling an airplane. It unloaded a plane. The airline has never furloughed employees.
Indeed, Southwest’s success story has become familiar to anyone who has been paying attention to the struggling airline industry. Southwest has achieved more than 30 consecutive profitable quarters on the way to becoming the fourth-largest airline in the U.S. It managed to stay profitable during the industry-wide crisis that followed 9/11. Although Southwest did not qualify for the federal bailout of the industry after 9/11, Kelleher supported it.
“I lobbied on behalf of something I didn’t need, because it was a national emergency,” he said. Last year, when the industry lost about $8 billion, Southwest earned $241 million on revenue of $5.5 billion.
Kelleher’s fondness for whiskey and cigarettes, and for poking fun at himself, has become part of his individualist image. He joked to Morrison that he decided to go to law school as a young man because, “I figured I could put off working for three more years.” He is the only person who can routinely get away with smoking inside the university’s classrooms and meeting rooms.
For many young people, those traits, and his habit of sprinkling his comments with vulgarities, only seem to add to his appeal. After the session with Morrison ended, Kelleher quickly was surrounded by students whose questions and comments delayed his departure by at least fifteen minutes.
On his way out of the UTC building, junior business major Estuardo Robles praised Kelleher’s ability to succeed while being true to himself. “Bad ass,” said the 21-year-old from Guatemala, which in the popular lexicon translates loosely as “awesome.”
In May, the university announced a gift of $4 million to the McCombs School from the Southwest legend to fund the Herb Kelleher Center for Entrepreneurship.
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Corporate Governance Forum or McCombs
Executive Education contact Assistant Dean and Director
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(512-471-1064).
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our
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contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at
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