Remembering Herb Kelleher

The co-founder and former CEO of Southwest Airlines, Herb Kelleher, has died. He was 87. We are grateful Herb shared his story with us in 2016. We are republishing it as a tribute to his life and career, in which he transformed the US airline industry. More than 50 years ago, competitors sued to keep Herb Kelleher's new airline grounded. After a 3-year court fight, the first plane took off from Dallas. Today Southwest Airlines is the country's largest domestic airline. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  Hey, it's Guy here. And by now, you may have heard that Herb Kelleher, the co-founder of Southwest Airlines, died on Thursday. Herb was 87. And in honor of Herb, we wanted to re-release this interview I did with him back in November of 2016. It is still one of my favorite all-time episodes of How I Built This, because his story, and the way he tells it, is delightful and funny, and also a truly inspiring account of sticking with an idea when the odds are stacked against you. So here it is. Here's to Herb, and enjoy.

• 0:42Guy Raz?

  You were basically introducing these really low fares. Were these airlines trying to match your prices?

• 0:48Speaker 01

  Yes, in some cases, they were. And we told the public of Texas that you could fly at the lower fare, but if you paid the higher fare, we would give you a free bottle of whiskey. And so for a couple of months, we became the largest liquor distributor in the state of Texas.

• 1:08Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 1:22Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how an eccentric Texas lawyer turned a crazy idea into Southwest Airlines, now one of the biggest airlines in the world.

• 1:37Guy Raz?

  Could you just start by introducing yourself, Mr. Kelleher?

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Make it Herb, if you would.

• 1:41Guy Raz?

  Herb?

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Please.

• 1:42Guy Raz?

  Okay, Herb. Can you just say your full name?

• 1:45Speaker 01

  This is Herb Kelleher.

• 1:48Guy Raz?

  And you're best known as the...

• 1:50Speaker 01

  Founder of Southwest Airlines.

• 1:52Guy Raz?

  Great. How old are you now?

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Eighty-five.

• 1:54Guy Raz?

  OK, great. Perfect. OK. We are very excited to talk to you about your story. Now, I'm just going to jump in here for a sec to mention that before we really started our interview, I had some time to just chit chat with Herb, and I learned some interesting things about him, like what he eats for breakfast.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Normally, for breakfast, I have cheese crackers.

• 2:12Guy Raz?

  And what he likes to drink.

• 2:15Speaker 01

  Wild Turkey bourbon.

• 2:16Guy Raz?

  And that he's been a smoker for pretty much his entire life.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  I just enjoy the magical, mystical aroma and sight of smoke.

• 2:26Guy Raz?

  So how soon after you wake up do you have a cigarette?

• 2:29Speaker 01

  Well, it's a nanosecond.

• 2:31Guy Raz?

  Oh, it's that quick. OK.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33Guy Raz?

  With your cheese crackers?

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, even before my cheese crackers.

• 2:38Guy Raz?

  Now, for the story of how Herb launched Southwest Airlines, you have to go back about 50 years, 1966, to be exact. Herb was a young lawyer. He was living in San Antonio in Texas, where he had started his own law firm, helping clients to start companies. And one day, one of Herb's clients, a guy named Roland King, calls him up, and he says, "Hey, I heard about this airline called Pacific Southwest. It flies only in California, and I have an idea. Let's meet for a drink."

• 3:07Speaker 01

  And Roland came to me with the idea of setting up a similar operation in Texas.

• 3:13Guy Raz?

  And how soon after he sort of floated this idea to you saying, "Yep, let's do it. Let's start a company?"

• 3:20Speaker 01

  It was a very short period of time, maybe, you know, like a minute.

• 3:26Guy Raz?

  That fast? Wow.

• 3:28Speaker 01

  No, it was longer than that. I was just joking. But within a very short days, within days.

• 3:33Guy Raz?

  Within days?

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Well, at first, I was very skeptical. But then I did some research and discovered that PSA was very successful in California, that Texas supplied all the requisites for an intrastate airline, because it was a big state that had large metropolitan areas, far enough apart to justify flying. And so Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio were the obvious first targets, because they were the three largest cities in Texas.

• 4:02Guy Raz?

  What did you know about airlines at the time?

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Well, I knew nothing about airlines, which I think made me eminently qualified. To start one, because what we tried to do at Southwest was get away from the traditional way that airlines had done business. So I started with the tabula rasa, blank slate, and I think that was very helpful.

• 4:24Guy Raz?

  So at this point in, how old were you, by the way, at that point in your life?

• 4:27Speaker 01

  I was 35.

• 4:29Guy Raz?

  35, okay. So you had a, and you had a family?

• 4:31Speaker 01

  Yes, right, four children.

• 4:32Guy Raz?

  Four children, and you've got this successful law firm. By the way, was the airline industry profitable at that time?

• 4:38Speaker 01

  No, it was not notably profitable. As a matter of fact, Warren Buffett reportedly joked about it at one time and said, if a capitalist had shot down the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk in 1903, the economy would probably be better off. And so it didn't have very great returns. It was constantly in difficulty.

• 5:01Guy Raz?

  So why did you even think that this was a plausible idea?

• 5:07Speaker 01

  Well, I think it was the allure of doing something different, doing something that was exciting. I really always have had a great deal of curiosity. And then I thought to myself, well, you know, most of the adults in the United States of America haven't been able to fly because of the cost barrier.

• 5:29Guy Raz?

  It's too expensive.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  It's too expensive. You know, they just thought it was business people on expense accounts. And so what I'm saying is that in terms of market analysis, there was a huge untapped market for flying out there.

• 5:47Guy Raz?

  Okay, so you decided with Rollin to start a company, was that right?

• 5:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I actually incorporated it in March of 1967. But of course, that was just a piece of paper. And we started to raise seed money to the extent of about $500,000.

• 6:04Guy Raz?

  That's, that was quite a lot of money to raise, I guess.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was at that time, it certainly was. And We were set to go.

• 6:11Guy Raz?

  And what was the competition like at the time? Were there other airlines that were doing these Texas flights, like between Houston and Dallas and these other places?

• 6:20Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. They proved to be our biggest adversaries because they were not exactly warm, welcoming, and hospitable.

• 6:27Guy Raz?

  A bet.

• 6:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. We didn't get kisses on both cheeks when we announced that we intended to create an intra-state carrier. So Braniff Continental and Trans-Texas, later Texas International, really took out after us. And they kept us involved in political fights and fights in the courts. And they just thought that they would apply their incumbency and their financial strength to bleed Southwest Airlines to death before it could ever fly.

• 6:57Guy Raz?

  So they were suing Southwest Airlines?

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 7:01Guy Raz?

  I mean, what was their argument? Why were they saying you shouldn't operate?

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Well, you know, the arguments that they made in court were actually all kind of specious. And this is one illustration of where people attempt to use to manipulate the government to prevent competition. That's what they were up to.

• 7:20Guy Raz?

  So how long did it take you to fight these legal challenges?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Well, between the time when I started working on forming Southwest and the time we flew our first flight, it was four and a half years.

• 7:32Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  It took a little pertinacity.

• 7:34Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  And during that time, the company ran out of money. And in 1969, the board of directors had a meeting and talked about shutting the airline down, shutting the company down. And I said, well, how about if I litigate for nothing and pay all the court costs out of my own pocket?

• 7:54Guy Raz?

  Huh.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Would you be willing to continue under those circumstances? And they said, oh, sure.

• 8:01Guy Raz?

  So, so what was it that motivated you to fight for four years to, to, to launch this airline?

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, I was idealistic about it because I figured if they can prevent Southwest Airlines from introducing what Southwest Airlines proposes to provide to the consumer, then that is a sign that the free enterprise system is failing. And one of the things that motivated me was to, in effect, validate the free enterprise system. And another one was, of course, that it was very hot competition and I liked to win.

• 8:40Guy Raz?

  But what's not, like, what I don't get is, it was such a huge gamble anyway, because you, you could have spent those four and a half years fighting and then winning, and then Southwest Airlines might have fizzled out anyway.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  I'll tell you what, guy, you put your finger on something, because if you had taken a poll in the state of Texas after we filed our application, I can assure you that 99.9% of the population of the state of Texas would say, this thing will never come to anything. I'm very serious about that. Several people told me, they said, they were glad to see how, how much the fight energized me and that I was enjoying it, but Herb, don't kid yourself, it'll never make a dime.

• 9:23Guy Raz?

  Did you ever get sad or, or depressed? I mean, how did you keep your spirits up?

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Wild Turkey helped. It may have provided, hey, guy, it may have provided a little boost. But frankly, my spirits just don't get down. I don't stress very easily. I'll give you an example only. They had stress classes at Southwest Airlines years ago, many years ago, and they invited me to come over and speak, you know, the fellow that was running the classes. And he said to the class, he said, well, you know, Herb undergoes a lot of stress all the time. Herb, tell the class how you handle it. And I said, I don't handle it, I like it. That was the last time I was asked back to the class.

• 10:07Guy Raz?

  So, so you, I mean, you were going in and out of courtrooms for four years. How were you making a living at that time?

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Well, I was still practicing law. I mean, I was doing a lot of other things during that time, which led to very long weeks.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  On one occasion, I was in the law office for two full days. And at the end of those two full days, I went home, shaved, and went to a fundraising dinner for Southwest Airlines. But that's kind of the perseverance that it demanded to help get Southwest Airlines started while still practicing law and doing many other things.

• 10:46Guy Raz?

  So what happened in the courts with the Southwest case?

• 10:49Speaker 01

  It went through the United States Supreme Court and through the Texas Supreme Court twice before we could fly. And the Texas Supreme Court handed down an order 19 hours prior to our first flight.

• 11:06Guy Raz?

  When was that?

• 11:07Speaker 01

  That was in June of 1971. We started flying on June 18, 1971.

• 11:13Guy Raz?

  What was the flight? Where did it go?

• 11:14Speaker 01

  The first flight went from Dallas to San Antonio. But the one that received all the publicity went from Dallas to Houston. And we were the underdog. It was sort of David versus the Goliaths, you know, not just one, but three of them. So there was a lot of news coverage about it, and that's the reason people paid a lot of attention to it finally getting underway.

• 11:37Guy Raz?

  So were you on that first flight, by the way?

• 11:40Speaker 01

  No, I wasn't. I was busy working to make sure there was a second flight.

• 11:44Guy Raz?

  Do you remember that day that that first flight took off? And do you remember how you felt? Did you feel like, finally, this is done?

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Oh, it was wonderful. And I'll tell you an experience I had when the first airplane came in. It was over in Fort Worth at American's hangar. So I went over there, and there's this airplane after four and a half years. I went up and stuck my head in the back of one of the engines. And the mechanic grabbed me, he pulled me back, and he said, "You realize if that thrust reverser goes off, it will decapitate you." And I said, "At this moment, I don't give a damn."

• 12:29Guy Raz?

  So at this point, Southwest Airlines, what, it starts advertising, it starts flying many, what was the, was it flying more than one route? Was it flying multiple routes?

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Well, it was Dallas-Houston, Houston-San Antonio, and San Antonio-Dallas.

• 12:43Guy Raz?

  And what was the, what was the, what did it cost to go, to do one of those legs?

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Well, on some flights, we had fares as low as $10. On others, we had fares as low as $15 or $20. We were about 45% lower than the other carriers.

• 12:59Guy Raz?

  So how were you able to do that? How were you able to charge so much, such a lower fare than the other airlines in Texas?

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Through enormous productivity.

• 13:09Guy Raz?

  But, but how? I mean, I'm assuming you just had a few planes at the time.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Well, we started out with three, and then we got a fourth one. We had to get rid of one airplane in order to meet our payroll right after Southwest started flying. And so, we decided that we would fly a four-airplane schedule with three airplanes.

• 13:30Guy Raz?

  How do you do that?

• 13:31Speaker 01

  10-minute turns at the gate. We'd bring that airplane in, and 10 minutes after it stopped at the gate, you know, it would be pushing back again. And we had airplanes that, you know, were operating 12 hours a day sometimes. So each one of those additional flights represented a revenue generation opportunity that the other carriers didn't have.

• 13:54Guy Raz?

  Okay, but even so, I mean, those other carriers, like Bran F. and Texas International, right, I mean, they were charging much, much higher fares. And it couldn't, it couldn't have just been that you turned planes around faster.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  No, it was a whole conjure thing. You're right about that. I was just giving you an example with the 10-minute turn, because it's a vivid one. In addition to that, they were by definition monopolists. They had been under 40 years of federal government supervision through the C A B.

• 14:27Guy Raz?

  The Civil Aeronautics Board?

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Yes, right. And during that time, if they had a little financial problem, the C A B would just give them a fare increase. And so that's how their fares got so high as compared to what we were doing, since we weren't regulated by the C A B.

• 14:46Guy Raz?

  Okay, so you weren't regulated in the same way, but I mean, were you doing other things, like paying your employees less?

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Well, it depended. Initially, we were paying them less. As the years went on, we were paying them more. Their total compensation was superior to the other carriers. And in addition, when we turned our first very slim profit in 1973, we set up the first profit-sharing plan in the American airline industry. And I think we made a profit of, I don't know, $100,000 that year, or something like that. But that went on, of course, to pour billions into our employees' pockets.

• 15:25Guy Raz?

  And your employees were unionized as well?

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were the most heavily-unionized carrier in the United States. Our low costs were not due to being a non-union carrier, since we were more unionized than our competitors were.

• 15:40Guy Raz?

  So you were basically introducing these really low fares. Were these airlines trying to match your prices?

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Yes, in some cases, they were. There's no question about that. As a matter of fact, Braniff at one point put in a lower fare than ours, which they called an introductory fare. Of course, they'd been serving Texas, you know, for 40 years by that time. But in any event, one of the things that came out of that was, we maintained our full fares, and we told the public of Texas that if you paid the higher fare, we would give you a free bottle of whiskey. And so for a couple of months, we became the largest liquor distributor in the state of Texas.

• 16:24Guy Raz?

  So Herb, you know, if I think about flying at that time, like, I'm thinking of like Mad Men and, you know, tumblers with scotch and like a glamorous experience. But Southwest was competing on price. I mean, you were not, you were not doing in-flight cocktails. So like, what did people think of your service versus the competition?

• 16:45Speaker 01

  Guy, I got a story to tell you on that. It was Thanksgiving of 1971. Remember, we've been in business since June.

• 16:51Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  And my sister-in-law, a delightful lady, called me at my law office. And she said, Herb, she said, I just flew from Houston to San Antonio on Southwest Airlines. And I've traveled most of the world's airlines, which was true. You know, she was a world traveler. And she said, I know you're going to be a big success. You've got the best in-flight service that I have ever experienced on any airline.

• 17:18Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  And I said, boy, am I glad to hear that. How many passengers were on the airplane? She said, just me.

• 17:31Guy Raz?

  In just a minute, Southwest goes national, and Herb convinces travelers that airlines do not have to serve in-flight meals. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 17:52Guy Raz?

  It's How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So throughout the 1970s, Southwest Airlines, they still only fly within the state of Texas. But then, in 1978, something really important happens. Congress decides to completely deregulate the airline industry. And for Southwest Airlines, that means they could now start flying to new cities outside of Texas. You know, Herb, at this point, Southwest is expanding and your competitors are no longer just Texas Airlines. You're competing with like American and Pan Am and TWA, right?

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:29Guy Raz?

  Like the national, major international carriers start to become your competitors.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:33Guy Raz?

  So were people skeptical that Southwest would be able to compete in, you know, the big leagues?

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. We were described as a Texas airline that could only be successful in the state of Texas, okay?

• 18:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  And then we were described as a Sun Belt airline that could not be successful outside the Sun Belt. There was a press conference, we went into Baltimore, where one of the reporters there said, "Well, you know, Mr. Kalahari," he said, "I know you've been very successful out West, but now you're coming to the East, the most competitive part of the country as far as airline service is concerned." And I said, "Yeah, it's so competitive that when we start out here, we're reducing your existing fares by 60 percent. How competitive does that sound to you?"

• 19:24Guy Raz?

  I mean, was Southwest at that time, were you guys already sort of no-frills?

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Well, we were no-frills, in the sense that we were short haul. And that kind of restricts what you can do. You have relatively short flights.

• 19:36Guy Raz?

  So like peanuts and drinks?

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then pretzels and that sort of thing. But you know, when we started flying longer haul, like from San Antonio to Los Angeles, we had a press conference, you know, to announce a new service. And one of the reporters there said, "Well, are you going to serve meals on those flights?" And I said, "No, we're not. We're going to charge you $400 less per trip, right? And I understand you can get a pretty good sandwich at Chasen's for $400."

• 20:08Guy Raz?

  So when, at what point did you give up your law practice?

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Actually, that was at the request of the board of directors in 1981.

• 20:16Guy Raz?

  So you were still, you still had your own law practice that you were doing other work for throughout the entire 1970s?

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, yeah. And I'll tell you the truth. You know, I didn't really hanker to be part of corporate life because, you know, lawyers have a lot more freedom to do their own thing when and where they want to. But we hired a very excellent fellow named Lamar Muse, who was a real battler, to get the company off the ground and operational. He had substantial airline experience and he did a wonderful job. And so, you know, finally in 1981, we'd lost this successor to Lamar, and the board director said to me, "You've got to do it."

• 20:57Guy Raz?

  And, and did you want to do it?

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Well, I felt I had to do it. And I'll tell you why. Because the start of the 1980s, you had unemployment of 10.8 percent. You had a double dip recession. You had the air traffic controller's strike. Then Lamar Muse, the guy we hired to get the company off the ground, he launched a competitor against us called Muse Air.

• 21:20Guy Raz?

  Oh, wait, he, he left Southwest and then launched a competitor?

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, so three years after he left called Muse Air.

• 21:26Guy Raz?

  How did you feel about that?

• 21:28Speaker 01

  Well, I thought it was somewhat immodest on his part.

• 21:31Guy Raz?

  Because he called it Muse Air after himself?

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:36Guy Raz?

  But were you, were you like, "What are you doing? I mean, I, we worked together all these years and now you're, I mean..."

• 21:41Speaker 01

  No, we bought him later.

• 21:44Guy Raz?

  You bought, you bought him later?

• 21:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, when they're on the verge of bankruptcy, yeah. We bought Muse Air. But it was there in 1981. So I figured I better do what the board asked me to do and come to Southwest Airlines full-time.

• 22:01Guy Raz?

  Was Southwest Airlines making money at the time?

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Yes. We've been profitable every single year for 43 years, I guess, now.

• 22:09Guy Raz?

  And it must have made the other airlines crazy because they were, a lot of them have had good years and bad years, but it seems like Southwest has just, has never had a bad year.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Well, we've had years when, you know, our earnings were down, but we've never had a loss for a full year since 1972. And we've never furloughed an employee at Southwest Airlines when the rest of the industry during that period up until now has probably furloughed, I don't know, a million and a half employees throughout the world. Basically, we looked at history and said, this is a very dicey business to be in. You know, the airline business?

• 22:49Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  So, we may be flamboyant from the marketing standpoint, but we're going to be very conservative from the fiscal standpoint. And I established a rule of thumb that we're going to pay 80% of the cost of all of our new airplanes from internally generated funds. And actually, we wound up paying 100% for most of our airplanes. So, we had the largest percentage in our fleet of owned airplanes of any carrier of any size.

• 23:20Guy Raz?

  So, what did that mean?

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, you're not taking on debt, right, when you do that? So, when you get into bad times, you're not threatened by the debt payments, which has put carriers into bankruptcy and out of bankruptcy and back into bankruptcy, you know, for 35 years.

• 23:38Guy Raz?

  You know, Herb, from the outside, from listening to your stories, the airline industry seems so brutal. Like, is it, do you think it's more savage than, than other industries?

• 23:49Speaker 01

  I think that it's more competitive than other industries.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  And one of the reasons for that is that our principal capital assets, the airplanes, move at 540 miles an hour.

• 24:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  And, you know, if you have a shoe factory that fails in Seattle, as an example, you can't, within hours, transport that shoe factory to Chattanooga, Tennessee, to compete there. But if your Seattle air service fails, you can have your airplanes in San Antonio or Chattanooga within a matter of hours. So the very mobility of your capital assets breeds a lot of competition.

• 24:32Guy Raz?

  Did you like that competition? Did you like being an airline CEO and managing all that stuff? Was it fun for you?

• 24:39Speaker 01

  Well, I had to adapt myself. Yeah, I loved being with the people of Southwest Airlines. That was like a fountain of youth for me. They were so wonderful and entertaining and, you know, great to be with. That's part of it. But when you're practicing law, you pretty much do your own thing. And it's a swift pace. Well, things didn't move as swiftly at first when I came to Southwest Airlines full-time. And I'm removing swiftly compared to the rest of the airline industry, but not compared to my experience.

• 25:14Guy Raz?

  Were you pushing for expansion and growth and all those things during your tenure?

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yes. I mean, Southwest Airlines expanded enormously, you know, from a very small base. But I soon realized it was a speech that I went to hear where a guru said, "If you can improve a corporation 5% in a year, that's a miracle." I said, "Oh, okay. I was trying to do 25%." Maybe that's why I was feeling a little frustrated. So it really brought my thinking, you know, more in line.

• 25:49Guy Raz?

  You know, I'm thinking, even if it might have seemed like it was a slow process for you, the fact that Southwest was growing and kind of prevailed in this industry is pretty remarkable and is pretty unbelievable, given that, you know, so many of those early competitors don't even exist anymore. And some of the great iconic airlines, TWA, Pan Am, they're gone.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  Exactly. Many of them. There are very few left.

• 26:14Guy Raz?

  What mistakes did they make that you seem not to have made?

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Well, we just did things differently, like market share, you know, a shibboleth supposedly. And I told anybody if they mentioned market share, I'd punch them in the nose. Because here are all these big companies fighting over their market share and losing money and furloughing employees.

• 26:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  So I said, let's focus on profitability. And if we have 4% of a market and we're profitable, that's better than having 90% of a market and being unprofitable.

• 26:52Guy Raz?

  What's the value of Southwest today, do you know?

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Overall?

• 26:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Oh, probably $20 billion, something like that.

• 27:00Guy Raz?

  So we're talking about one of the biggest airlines in the United States, easily?

• 27:04Speaker 01

  In the world, in terms of passengers carried.

• 27:07Guy Raz?

  It's unbelievable.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it really is. It's like I've had too much wild turkey, you know, and fantasizing.

• 27:16Guy Raz?

  By the way, when you started the company, how much did you invest personally?

• 27:21Speaker 01

  I invested $10,000.

• 27:23Guy Raz?

  Which must be worth quite a bit today, I imagine.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Well, it's gone up some since then. But at the company, is what I thought was a requirement of good leadership, I always turned down pay increases, bonus increases, to set a good example, I thought, for all of our people. Of course, the stock that I got rose enormously in value, but that was in lieu of cash compensation.

• 27:49Guy Raz?

  So you were mainly paid with stock options?

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, basically with stock. I got the biggest kick out, just to give an exemplar, when I did a stock option deal in lieu of pay raises with our pilots, so they got Southwest Airlines' stock options in lieu of a pay increase, I took no pay increase along with them. And I'm not trying to single anybody out, but there was a... The head of an airline that was smaller than Southwest Airlines and on the verge of going out of business, whose salary and bonus were three times what mine were at Southwest Airlines, and that's the way I wanted it.

• 28:25Guy Raz?

  By the way, are you ever worried that some, you know, some young, you know, Herb Keller-type character is going to come around and put up some upstart airline and knock Southwest off its throne?

• 28:36Speaker 01

  I'm concerned about it all the time. I wrote a letter to our employees, and it was about my 10 foremost concerns for the next decade of Southwest Airlines, okay?

• 28:47Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  And number one was us, that we ignore competition, that we get complacent, that we get cocky. And I used the line, "Think small and act small and we'll get bigger. Think big and act big and we'll get smaller."

• 29:04Guy Raz?

  So it could happen one day.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Oh, it's possible. You know, I'm a history buff, and if you look at the largest companies in the United States as the 19th century turned into the 20th, most of them are gone. The Central Leather Company in 1900, 1901, was the 17th largest company in the United States, but it didn't anticipate what the advent of the Ford automobile was going to mean. You know what it did?

• 29:37Guy Raz?

  Hmm.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  It made buggy whips and saddles.

• 29:40Guy Raz?

  Hmm.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  And never stopped doing it until it was gone. And if you look at countries, or you look at companies, they perish. And if you have any sense of history, you realize that and, you know, try to avoid it.

• 29:55Guy Raz?

  You know, hearing the story of how you made this happen and all the work you put into it, I wonder if you think you're just wired differently to be able to put up with all that stuff for so many years?

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Well, I think, yeah, I probably am wired a little bit differently from many people, and they're probably very happy about that difference themselves. But one of the things is that I never look back.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  You know, I don't spend a lot of time regretting things that went wrong. And furthermore, I think that I've always had a great deal of fun out of what I was doing. And, you know, people would say to me, "Why aren't you burned out?"

• 30:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  You know, "I was working 100 hours a week." And I would answer very simply, "Well, it's easy when you have a passionate joy in what you're doing. You don't burn out."

• 30:50Guy Raz?

  Herb Kelleher co-founded Southwest Airlines 50 years ago, and he served as CEO and then on the board before retiring in 2008. By the way, Herb Kelleher once resolved a trademark dispute with a rival airline. They were both using the slogan "Plane Smart." He resolved this not in court, but by challenging the other CEO to a public arm wrestling match, which Herb Kelleher lost. And you can see that entire arm wrestling match. Just go to Google and type in "The Malice in Dallas."