What's Going on at Southwest Airlines? -- a Book Review

Nuts! Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success by Kevin Freiberg and Jackie Freiberg is a book about the startup and climb to solvency of the "little airline that could" - Southwest Airline. I had no idea of the struggle to survive all passenger airline companies undergo, or the lengths to which the Big Boys would go to keep new competitors out of the marketplace. Whew, brutal!

Allow me to start by observing that I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. I suspect that I would fit right in with the folks working at this company. Why? Because they are my kind of nuts! The way they had to fight their way up, serving three cities - fighting to even be allowed to exist - kind of reminds me of... well, me. Branniff, Texas International, and Continental Airlines certainly didn't want a young upstart to come along and show people that airlines could offer less expensive flights. They turned their lawyers loose to try to prevent it. However, as the authors point out, Goliath did not stop David either. David, God, and a slingshot won that battle, and Southwest won its battle too. I could not help but laugh as I learned what the big boys in the airline industry tried to do, and how little Southwest just kept plugging away. The judicial system, thank God, does not always allow those with the most gold to make the rules.