By RICHARD N. VELOTTA
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
DALLAS
The fuselage is lurching, and the cabin is filling with smoke.
Suddenly, a smoke detector alarm goes off and flight attendants begin screaming over and over, “Heads down, stay down!”
Once the motion stops, everybody on board unbuckles and moves quickly to the exit, jumping feet first onto the evacuation slide with their arms folded across their chests. At the bottom of the slide, the best thing to do is get out of the way — and fast.
Anyone who flies might have thought through the scenario they never want to experience when they travel. Southwest Airlines flight attendants live it at least once a year in recurring training, including this demonstration for news media gathered at Southwest’s headquarters at Love Field this month.
The cabin simulator at Southwest’s state-of-the-art training center is one of the big back-of-the-house investments the airline has made to re-establish itself as a customer favorite.
Southwest’s popularity remains strong but has slipped as the airline’s on-time ratings plummeted over the past year. Southwest, the busiest commercial air carrier at McCarran International Airport, has a lot on its plate with the integration of AirTran, which it acquired in a merger in 2010, the initiation of international air service to Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America, and the broadening of service from its Dallas headquarters next month on the horizon.
To regain some of the mojo the airline has lost, the company opened its 492,000-square-foot, $120 million Training and Operations Support building in April and its innovative Listening Center social media outpost last month.
BACK TO THE TOP
Most customers won’t see either place, but Southwest is betting that having them will allow it to better connect with passengers and employees. That and other initiatives, it says, will push the airline back to the top in the public’s eyes.
The Training and Operations Support building next door to the company’s headquarters is not only home to the emergency evacuation trainer but also a realistic ticket counter, an airport gate, a jet bridge and classrooms for what the airline calls Southwest Airlines University. For the first time, employees from the airline’s various departments can learn and practice together in realistic environments to improve their understanding of each others’ responsibilities and departments.
Like all the other training venues, the evacuation simulator is lifelike. The action occurs regularly in a replica of a Boeing 737 jet. The simulator can be programmed for severe turbulence with many of the jolts of an emergency landing.
Before the incident, some of the “passengers” — reporters and photographers from all over the country, in this case — were briefed on their roles if they sat in the emergency rows of the aircraft. The flight attendants on this “flight” had gone through their preparations for departure, including arming the evacuation slides, just as they would before any takeoff.
Not only do flight attendants have to know all the procedures, but they have to be physically able to push out window and door exits that weigh up to 40 pounds and guide passengers to safety.
Southwest Chairman, President and CEO Gary Kelly considers the money spent as an investment in the airline’s 46,000 employees, including more than 3,000 in Las Vegas.
But when it comes to arriving and leaving on time, Southwest recently has taken a dive.
Nowhere is that more evident than in Las Vegas, where the carrier has fallen to last among the 11 busiest carriers using McCarran.
ON-TIME ISSUES
An analysis of Southwest’s on-time performance at McCarran by Colorado-based Boyd Group International indicates Southwest flight arrivals and departures operated on schedule just 73.2 percent of the time in the 12 months from August 2013 to July.
In December, a month in which the East Coast was battered with bad weather, Southwest had a brutal 61 percent on-time performance. That means about four flights out of every 10 arrived 15 minutes or later than they were scheduled.
There are several reasons flights are late. Some are because of bad weather. Others don’t leave on time because of a mechanical problem with the plane. Others are slowed because of air-traffic-control issues.
Flights to Las Vegas often fall into the late category because they arrive late from other places experiencing bad weather. But in the mind of the traveler, none of that really matters — they just know they’re not going to get to where they want to be on time.
Among the most chronically late for Southwest were Flight 714, which operates from Los Angeles to Las Vegas to Lubbock, Texas; and Flight 4614 from San Francisco International to Las Vegas to Houston’s Hobby International Airport.
Kelly said there’s a simple reason why performance fell so dramatically.
The airline is in transition. A company that built itself on competing with the automobile for travel is moving toward more long-haul flights 43 years after its founding.
Southwest jumped on an opportunity with Boeing to modify an aircraft order to acquire 737-800 jets, which hold 175 passengers, in place of some 737-700s, which hold 143. Las Vegas was one of the markets where Southwest flies more of its 800 series jets because of the high leisure market demand.
The airline quietly expanded the number of seats it brings to the Las Vegas market — now at 212,520 a week — without appreciably increasing the number of flights.
Southwest took delivery of its first 800 jet in 2012; today, 66 of its 683 jets are 800s.
Kelly said even with an additional crew member — the 175-seat capacity of the larger plane requires an extra flight attendant — Southwest couldn’t unload and fill planes at their gates fast enough. Another piece of Southwest’s profitability model has been to “turn” aircraft quickly when they’re on the ground. Quick turns mean more flights and more flights mean better aircraft use and efficiency.
But Southwest couldn’t keep up, so instead of building efficiency, it just irritated loyal customers. A decision was reached to build more ground time into stops, which reduced aircraft use but kept customers happy.
MONITORING SOCIAL MEDIA
And Southwest is really interested in what its customers think. That’s what led to the opening of the Listening Center, a facility where employees monitor social media and often spot the first sign of trouble that something is wrong within the system.
When people start complaining about a problem on Twitter or Facebook, a member of the Listening Center team can contact personnel in a specific department or airport location to get clarity on the issue and set the wheels in motion to fix it.
The Listening Center is equipped with social media visualizations, operational data, consumer-generated media and mainstream news coverage to get real-time information to which airline managers can react.
There’s a Listening Center work station in Southwest’s Network Operations Control center, the command center from which the airline runs its 3,600 flights a day to and from 93 destinations in 40 states.
Las Vegas is a high priority for Southwest as its second-busiest station behind Chicago’s Midway Airport.
Las Vegas will be among the cities getting additional flights next month when the Wright Amendment — which Southwest has fought for decades — finally comes to an end. The sunsetting of the amendment, designed to help Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport grow when it first opened, will enable Southwest to offer nonstop flights to and from Dallas Love Field from airports beyond Texas and its immediate neighboring states.
Southwest also has built a huge presence in Washington, D.C., serving all three major airports in the area, including Baltimore-Washington International, where Southwest is the busiest carrier.
Baltimore is now a key Southwest gateway to the Caribbean, and it’s also the launch city for the airline’s first foray into Central America with flights beginning in March to San Jose, Costa Rica.
With everything that the airline is undertaking, Kelly believed the time was right to launch the high-profile branding upgrade that included a new paint scheme for Southwest’s jets.
Kelly says its a cost-neutral move since every plane eventually has to be repainted anyway. Southwest piggy-backed on its advertising relationship with the National Football League to make a big splash at the beginning of the NFL season.
When Heart One, the first aircraft painted with the new design was unveiled in Dallas earlier this month, Kelly said it was dedicated to the airline’s employees.
It was a gesture that went a long way with the workforce, which is more motivated than ever to recapture its prominence in the airline industry.
Contact reporter Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on Twitter.
Source: southwest - Google News http://ift.tt/1rvrmwC
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