Southwest Airlines Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Southwest Airlines as an intern for less than a year

Pros – Able to communicate with others, endless opportunities to learn not only within your position, but the whole company. Everyone you meet truly has a servants heart and will go above and beyond to help you

Cons – The benefits include free (space available travel) and relatively low pay. The ability to fly is an incredible one, but also very tricky. Interns do not get any vacation or time off, as expected with it being an internship. But being able to travel on days besides friday evening and sunday, even if it is just once, would be amazing.

Advice to Senior Management – Your great! keep up the good listening!

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Southwest Airlines full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – Stability, benefits, opportunities to move around the company, some awesome people work here

Cons – As with any major corporation: Bureaucracy

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Southwest Airlines full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Best company I have ever worked for fly benefits everyone is very friendly they appreciate us always doing fun things endless volunteer opportunities. Corporate is great

Cons – But lately I see a change which makes me sad it should be about customer service with a smile not possible to do all that they want now in less then 300 seconds unless your rushing

Advice to Senior Management – Team leaders need to realize our mission statement & praise us for giving great customer service lets all be a team player we all have one goal to be successful together but to sit there & criticize bottom line did I help the customer & did I give great customer service not you helped to much

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Southwest Airlines

Pros – Great group of people to work with. Flight benefits.

Cons – Bad management in our department.

Current Employee – been working at Southwest Airlines full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Management actually takes the time and effort to make its employee's feel like part of a big family from day one.

Cons – Sometimes I feel guilty for how much fun I have and how much food and drink I consume at official and unofficial Southwest parties.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Southwest Airlines as an intern for less than a year

Pros – I worked a summer internship with Southwest Airlines and had the best experience of all of my friends. Great atmosphere and a lot of hands on experience to contribute to my future career.

Cons – I had none, I wish I could have stayed longer!

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Southwest Airlines full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Employee morale high, lots of employee social events, volunteering outside the company for a cause is encouraged. Management very in tune to their employees overall. Open door policy for managers, can contact them or meet with them no matter your level or status. Management knows you by name which surprised me. Allow volunteer meeting to happen during work hours. Have deck parties every week for employees sponsored by a new department each week. Big employee pep rally each Spring off campas include food and beverages. Provide positive feedback to employees in the form of kick tails which are entered into a drawing each quarter for prizes. For the size of the company the communication is great, they lay out where we are financially where most companies are hush hush. They involve employees in making changes, if there is an issue within the company that needs resolved they will usually enlist ideas from employees as possible solutions.
Career advancement in the company is good but for new employees it may take several years because during the interview process they do look at seniority of the applicants even interval positions.

Cons – Only thing I see since I have been there is when we brought Air Tran onboard some of their people were put in management positions but they did not have the SWA mentality. So you had employees that had been managed in a certain style and it changed overnight in some cases with the new AT personnel. AT is more stringent and follow a fine line. Some do not understand the servants heart mentality and do not promote volunteering. The only other issue I see is SWA i behind in technology, so computer sytems have trouble maintaining the amount of business we have. They also have been growing and are trying to rebuild headquarters to sustain new people and AT people and have greatly reduced work space sizes because of it. Work space can be very claustrophobic, lots of noise and foot traffic within work spaces even in areas that should be quiet. Instead of trying to fit more people into smaller spaces they need to broaden their horizons and try to push for certain positions to be worked remotely. There are many that could do that but then you would need the technology to sustain that.

Advice to Senior Management – Start researching incorporating remote positions or semi-remote and the technology needed to sustain it.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Southwest Airlines full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Travel benefits were great and fun.

Cons – People were nice and great.

Advice to Senior Management – Better supervisors.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Southwest Airlines

Pros – Good people and great culture

Cons – Bad idea to merge with airtran

Former Employee – worked at Southwest Airlines full-time for more than 10 years

Pros – Excellent benefits and perks, empowered employees, opportunity for advancement, play hard and work hard, lots of training opportunities. Treat employees VERY well! Incredible culture. Truly a company that you can start and end your career with, especially if you are willing to relocate for promotions.

Cons – Lower pay for corporate positions than at other Fortune 500 companies

Advice to Senior Management – Consider increasing salaries. It's disheartening to spend years working for a company you love and watch people who left the company come back and get higher salaries. The motivation is to leave SWA and come back to get any kind of measurable salary increase.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company