A great example for lead bullets:
<a href="http://www.bhorowitz.com/lead_bullets" rel="nofollow">http://www.bhorowitz.com/lead_bullets</a>
I recommend reading Great by Choice [1] which talks more about Southwest Airlines and what makes them great. The book is about "10X companies" and what they have in common, but also what they do differently from their competitors. For example, Southwest Airlines copied PSA's business model verbatim but PSA [2] went out of business. The book talks about why. The main reason I like the book and others in the series [1] is that it is like reading a really long research paper about what makes great companies great with entertaining anecdotes sprinkled in.<p>1. <a href="http://www.jimcollins.com/books.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.jimcollins.com/books.html</a><p>2. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Southwest_Airlines" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Southwest_Airlines</a>
> "You guys are either going to turn these airplanes in 10 minutes or I'm going to fire every single one of you — and I'm going to hire a whole new crew that's willing to work and turn these airplanes in 10 minutes."<p>Sounds like a great way to fail spectacularly. If it <i>was</i> impossible, it wasn't going to magically work just because everyone was too afraid to tell him.
Interesting. I never knew about this, and it certainly isn't true of Southwest today. These days they're the cattle-car of airlines, with their lack of assigned seating.<p>I found this bit particularly interesting, though:<p>> Today, the task of getting in and out of the gate in 10 minutes is impossible — but back then, says reporter Terry Maxon, the 10-Minute Turn saved the airline.<p>What makes it so impossible? Airport security has gotten far worse, but that's long before the gate. <i>At</i> the gate, what makes this less possible than it was back then?
Being fast was good for the customer too. Being able to show up a few minutes before the plane was scheduled to depart, buy a ticket, walk out on the tarmac, board, and take off is a far cry from modern air travel.<p>The "bus" mentality, really worked in TX where the cities are close enough to have a lot of commerce/travel but far enough away that driving can take a considerable amount of time. Flight time between dallas->houston is an hour, driving is 3 hours. The problem is that with full planes, reliably buying a same day ticket is basically impossible. Add in parking/shuttles, security and and all the BS pushes the time in excess of 2 hours. Plus, its hard to guess at weather a few days out, so sometimes you know on the way to the airport that delays/etc are going to cause a flight to take longer than driving.<p>The 5 minute faster boarding time on SW is no longer a customer service advantage when the customer has been waiting over an hour to board.
I'm so torn reading this. I do occasionally fly Southwest and I'm always impressed with how everyone working for Southwest seems just as focused on on time as I am. At the same time I think they started the "race to the bottom" that has made air travel such an increasingly unpleasant experience now in the US.
Is this one thing credited with saving the airline, or were there other efforts involved? I don't understand how a 10-minute turnaround time can turn an airline around so quickly.
NPR doesn't give much credit to the SW airlines ads of the 1970's.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR7JApjgIGw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR7JApjgIGw</a>