Southwest Airlines CEO Bob Jordan tends not to wear suits when flying so he can give the flight crew a hand.
In a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times, he revealed his own flying habits, talked about Southwest’s recent decision to end long-standing policies, and shared advice he got from legendary cofounder Herb Kelleher.
Jordan said he prefers the window seat, but sits in the aisle when flying for business so he can get up, talk to the flight attendants, and move about the cabin.
“I serve snacks. I pick up trash. Then I go sit in the cockpit and talk to our pilots,” he told the Times. “I don’t want to be crawling over people, so I tend to sit on the aisle so I can get out and do stuff.”
In fact, he seldom wears a suit when flying and usually wears a vest or polo shirt because he wants to work with the crew. Suits are typically reserved for visits to Washington, D.C., and meetings with lawmakers or other officials.
Jordan even suggested his helpful habits extend to the ground crew.
“I want to go downstairs and unload bags. It’s super hard to unload bags and get in the belly of the aircraft with a suit on,” he said.
The CEO also discussed reactions to Southwest’s decision last year to end its famous open-seating policy and begin charging for premium seating as well as its pivot earlier this year to sharply scale back its “bags fly free” policy.
“I know we have some that are not happy—and we have many, many, many that are happy,” Jordan said. “You have to keep talking because sometimes people don’t understand what you’re doing. What I find is that once folks know where we’re headed, they’re very excited. I think you just have to play through this period of change because change is hard.”
He acknowledged that Southwest has to play “a bit of catch-up” with other airlines by transitioning to the new policies in a matter of months and not years.
But he denied the changes were driven by activist shareholder Elliott Investment Management, which sought a shakeup at the airline. The airline revamped its board last year but kept Jordan as CEO.
Jordan was also reminded that he started at Southwest in 1988, when Kelleher was the CEO, and said they met on his first day.
When asked what Kelleher, who passed away in 2019, would think of the big changes going on at Southwest today, he answered with some advice he got from the airline’s cofounder.
“One of the No. 1 Herb quotes was, ‘If you don’t change, you die,’” Jordan recalled. “Herb didn’t build the airline to be about open seating and plastic boarding cards. That was an outgrowth of wanting to be efficient. Herb built the airline around being different from a service perspective.”
