Southwest Airlines Reviews

Pros

They offer free flight benefits even though they don't go outside the country. I've made some friends there also, but management knows how to pressure your friends to turn on you because they need their jobs.

Cons

Southwest Airlines says they're all about the people and creating a fun place to work. They give you all the happy BS crap, but don't provide employees a way of letting the company know when management oversteps its bounds. Middle managers are petty, vengeful, and feel like they're above the rules. Southwest does educate managers as to how they should treat employees, but they don't provide the means to ensure employees are being well-treated. For this, Southwest FAILS miserably. Their "culture" is used against you. Reviews include when "you're not being happy enough" but fail to include that because you're treated like crap, it's hard to stay happy.

Advice to Senior Management

Show some responsibility to your employees. Empower them with a way to call attention to abusive managers. By not holding managers accountable, you are a failure as a company. People are saying "our culture isn't the same as it used to be" but don't want to call anyone out on the fact that managers are mistreating their employees. Shame on you.

Pros

travel, experience, looks great on a resume, and a good conversation topic

Cons

worked to death, developed illnesses, continually pushed to perform

Pros

pass privileges
on target senior management
company is trending in the right direction

Cons

reservations management is unrealistic
mandatory overtime day after day because of poor planning in hiring
firing of senior agents that make $$$
unrealistic production goals
micromanagement at its finest

Advice to Senior Management

No one can continue to work 12 hours day after day and
not have a negative effect on their family and health. Stop
the mass firing of senior agents. Promote a positive work
environment and absenteeism will fall.

 Monitoring guidelines are completely unrealistic and are
 used to weed out high paying employees and target people.

New employees don't want all the stress and quit left
and right.

On a bright note, the rest of Southwest is not
 run like this. Send management from HDQ to
assess the situation.

Pros

Good environment and fun to work at

Cons

Industry troubles affecting all airlines

Advice to Senior Management

All good. No complaints competent

Pros

The People, the Culture, the Benefits...the list goes on and on! It is a great place to launch a Job and keep a Career.

Cons

Trying to figure out which city to fly to on the weekends! Other than that, there really is not a whole lot.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the good work! In light of recent problems, management has really stepped up and kept the Company in a positive light.

Pros

Hang in there-follow the rules and flight crews are paid well. Work hard-long days. Benefit package is excellent.

Cons

Company is growing and exhibits obvious growing pains and is not great at meeting change/although is continually says it understand changes. Good ideas offered by employees are often met with "we've always done it "this" way- resulting in frustration.

Advice to Senior Management

LISTEN to front line employees---they see it all---do it all---and understand it all. Get it?

Pros

Great environment, benefits, pay. Senior Management extremely competent & fair. The organizational tone set at the very top levels are top notch.

Cons

The company has grown large. Although senior management is top notch, some programs and tones done always trickle down to the line. A lot of challenges face the airline industry and Southwest seems to handle these challenges better than most others, but it's still a hard industry.

Advice to Senior Management

Customer service remains king. I know you know it, but I am less confident that everyone on the line still gets it. The problem of bad customer service spans the entire seniority spectrum and accros many departments.

Pros

Great benefits (health, 401k, travel etc)
Fun culture
Great industry
Family atmosphere
Lots of parties

Cons

Few/no opportunities to grow
Few/no opportunities for pay increases other than annual 2-3%
Directors and above are disconnected from their workers, live a completely different lifestyle
You must drink the kool-aid or it won't be fun
50/50 your co-workers are of strong quality/education/experience
Some departments get different perks than others. i.e. Pilots get a different retirement packages, Flight Attendants have flexible schedule, etc

Pros

good people to be with

Cons

Its a long drive to work

Pros

Great culture where people can work hard but at the same time have fun. Everyone is willing to go the extra mile.

Cons

Salaries are not the high compared to other airlines. Other than that, I do not have any downsides for SWA

Advice to Senior Management

I would recommend to try and higher back as many interns as they can. Almost all interns want to return to work for SWA.