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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
The raging battle over Southwest Airlines, a brief history of no-frills airlines, and bad Hooters Air jokes.
Jun 20, 2003 | Several people took issue with my poking fun at Southwest Airlines in last week's column. My parody of French bashing back in May had me wondering if the American notion of humor was going the way of its civil liberties and good sense, but now I'm really nervous.
"So, you think it's funny to mock Southwest, even after you noted that there were very few critical comments of them? Forget that I think what you did was unfair; insulting Southwest was an incredibly lazy thing to do as a writer."
The emphasis on "lazy" is his. To answer the question: Yes, I thought it was funny. Isn't that the point sometimes, playing up a stereotype, affecting a little parody? It might not have been an Emmy-winning script, exactly, but "incredibly lazy"? Tough crowd.
Come on, if any airline is self-deprecating enough to absorb a waggish jab or two, it's LUV (to use Southwest's stock-ticker code, taken from its home base of Love Field in Dallas). This is an airline whose founder, Herb Kelleher, once arm-wrestled a rival to settle a trademark dispute. (It was a stunt, sure, but the airline biz could use a few more of those. Who wouldn't wanna see a grudge match between Continental's Gordon Bethune and Delta's Leo Mullin?)
But maybe I've been too harsh. Let's take a look through the archives and see which insults I've slung against Kelleher's brainchild:
Ouch, there's "cattle car" a few times. Predictable and not very original. And there's my roasting of the revised paint scheme, which includes this: "A Southwest jet looks like an overly rich dessert concocted by a starving child ... a vision of peyote-induced lunacy." Now that's pretty mean. I just saw one of Southwest's commercials and thought the plane looked pretty cool. However, if I'm dinged out of a prime-time stupor one more time and reminded that I'm "now free to move about the country," I will need to be institutionalized.
Wait, another LUV shareholder -- I mean, random allegiant customer -- has just written...
"I feel that I must write in defense of Southwest Airlines. They have never claimed to be anything more than they are -- a no-frills, discount way to fly."
Sure, but that's exactly what I said in my column. I believe I accused Southwest not only of mixing overly colorful shades of red and blue paint but also of having "perfected the art of get-what-you-pay-for satisfaction," which is precisely what the above comment implies.
And good for them. As an airline employee -- especially one riding out the doldrums of a protracted furlough -- it would be idiotic of me to criticize Southwest's successes at making air travel as affordable and popular as possible. While I lament a lack of dignity in today's cabins, I am not exactly nostalgic for the pomp and castelike constraints we knew in the 1950s. As it stands, the U.S. domestic air system is an important testament to our democracy and personal economic autonomy. Some might say the Airline Deregulation Act of 1979 is the more appropriate reference, but either way it's without irony that the airline deems itself "a symbol of freedom."
I'm all for an egalitarian system of transport. But that doesn't mean I must tolerate lousy service, chaos and screaming infants. Well, it does, I suppose, because by virtue of the above it has to, but only to the point when dignity and accessibility begin to rapidly diverge. At this threshold, access and low fares are no longer a good tradeoff for small discomforts. And that divergence is the crux of any glib remark I've made about Southwest. At some point easy access and low fares are no longer a good tradeoff for inconvenience. Which isn't to say every Southwest flight is chaotic, uncomfortable or jammed with crying babies. When all is said and done, Southwest is probably no worse than anyone else. Moreover, if the tickets are inexpensive, and because of that you're inclined to demand less than you would aboard Delta or United, then everyone is happy. Unless Southwest is the harbinger of a time when we can't get classy travel even if we're willing to pay for it. Which brings us back to the mastery of you-get-what-you-pay-for.
Let's all have a drink -- something domestic, cheap and served in aluminum -- to the unpretentious glory of Southwest Airlines.
