Southwest Airlines recently announced its schedule and fares for its service between Minneapolsi/St. Paul and Chicago Midway. The first flight will take off on March 8th, 2009. The announcement of fares is bound to create a bit of buzz for Southwest in the Twin Cities. Here’s why: The current price of a one-way airfare between MSP and Chicago is $426. Southwest’s lowest price will be $69 one-way (21 day advanced purchase required). The best round trip deal from the airlines that currently fly the route (Northwest/Delta and American) is well over $300. The math reveals that Northwest and others have some soul searching and price cutting to do in order to stay competitive on the route.
And, since Southwest also announced 8 daily flights, it appears that there will be plenty of seat avialible for those who want to give the proverbial finger to the big boys and save some cash in the process. When service launches, Southwest will only be flying the one route between MSP and Midway. However, from Midway, Southwest flies to 47 cities nationwide.
If you were following along the tweetfeed and some of the events late last week, you may have learned that I spent a little bit of time down at Southwest Airlines‘ HQ in Dallas for Halloween. Each year the airline has an internal competition among the departments to decorate their sections, arrange skits and try to outdo each other for the famed glory and bragging rights of the best performance.
This year, I came down with The Cranky Flier and EGW from Jaunted to help in judging the competition and to witness the madness first hand. And madness it was.
To begin with, Southwest’s CEO, Gary Kelly takes the holiday pretty seriously (he’s about the complete opposite from me.) A few years back he dressed up as Gene Simmons from Kiss. Last year he was a chick. And his enthusiasm trickles down into the soul of the entire company. EVERYONE gets fired up for this day. When I showed up at HQ just after seven, I briefly had breakfast with my colleagues and was introduced to Gary, who this year was dressed up as Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top. Yes, that’s him pictured above; here’s a picture of him in real life. Two of his closest colleagues were dressed up as other band members. Here they are practicing their moves:
After introductions and pictures, we were quickly ushered outside to golf carts that took us over to the MX hangar where aircraft are refurbished and fixed. I could have spent all day here but instead we were led through to a surprisingly impressive haunted house, complete with goons jumping out at you and fake blood.
With everyone safe and sound, much of the rest of the day involved visiting different departments and participating in assorted skits and activities that they had prepared. Some, involving dozens of employees coordinated into singing and dancing productions MUST have been professionally choreographed, begging the question of how much time and cash went into the production (and how much these bragging rights are really worth.) Others, like the Indiana Jones reenactment looked like they took weeks of construction and planning.
In the end, it was that sort of effort that ended up getting the judge’s vote for best performance. Both the Indiana Jones reenactment and a Southwest Spin on Mama Mia titled “SWAMama Mia” took home prizes for best performance.
As for the judges, we enjoyed ten seconds of fame at the end of the day when we were introduced to the employees up on stage. And I’m proud to say that I’m the only blogger that carried a beer up with him.
Until next year, friends at Southwest. I probably need that long to recover.
Oh, to be part of the airline industry. As we recently saw in great detail, Southwest Airlines takes the holiday very, very seriously. Out at their headquarters on Friday, I was privy to a celebration of epic proportions — several departments decked out completely in costume and decoration, some with meticulous construction and weeks put into planning. I heard that some departments hired professional choreographers to coordinate their dance moves. More on that later this week though.Elsewhere in the industry, Virgin America also hosted a smaller celebration at their headquarters in California, complete with over-the-top costumes and decorations. I also heard that some Northwest employees dressed up as Delta employees. Wild.
In other news, the candy jar at my office has been empty for about a month now. I’ll cross my fingers on the Halloween celebrations getting kicked off next year.
Apparently the celebration involves golf carts on the tarmac, an airline CEO dressed up as ZZ Top and a Gadling blogger with a yet to be photographed orange pilot suit (I’ve demanded photographic evidence of that!).
Stay tuned to our Twitter feed for updates as the day progresses, and perhaps we’ll catch a glimpse of even more wacky costumes.
As I’m sitting on WN1540 headed towards Saint Louis, I’m starting to realize just how serious they take Halloween at Southwest Airlines. Sure, I know they’ve always been a little wacky – their blog is called “Nuts about Southwest” after all – but I guess at the core of that fun, outer shell I just expected to see the same old straight-laced corporate abomination.
It took me until about page 12 of “Spirit,” their in-flight magazine, to start to change my mind. On it is the normal letter that Gary Kelly, Southwest’s CEO always writes to the reader and passenger — only the topic of this note is how passionate he and his airline are about Halloween. And at the bottom is a cutout picture of Mr. Kelly dressed up as Gene Simmons from Kiss.
Alright. So maybe when I was invited out to Southwest’s headquarters to help judge the annual Halloween contest I underestimated how strange this could get. Yes, they did ask me to dress up and yes, I do have an orange pilot’s suit in my carry-on. But Gene Simmons? Are you serious?
Well, I guess we’ll see what happens. Throughout the day today I’ll be wandering around Southwest headquarters with Gary, some friends from Jaunted and The Cranky Flier, inspecting some of the decorations and skits that the various departments have prepared and declaring the most outrageous getup as winners.
You can follow along at our Twitter feed with live picture updates, or for those more patient among you, you can probably wait until I return home for the closing post. I have a feeling I’ll be sleeping on the return flights.