Growing up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, we often flew Southwest Airlines out of New Orleans’ Louis Armstrong International Airport. Such trips usually also involved a visit to my maternal grandparents, lifelong NOLA residents. My grandpa always referred to Southwest as the “cattle car.” In reading this past week about the legendary Herb Kelleher, Southwest’s visionary co-founder who passed away on January 3rd, I learned that my grandpa’s moniker wasn’t original. Nope, grandpa had apparently fallen into step with competitors purportedly responsible for the nickname. Unfazed, Kelleher, with characteristic playfulness, had responded by offering Southwest customers a free bag to either cover their faces if embarrassed to fly with the airline or to hold all the money they’d save by doing so (clip starts at 1:08)! With Kelleher, such stunts were commonplace. He even participated in an arm-wrestling match rather than litigation to determine whether Southwest or Stevens Aviation would be entitled to use of the slogan “Just Plane Smart” (you can find this on YouTube too!).
Like many readers of this blog, Kelleher was a lawyer (an NYU law school graduate). In 1966, in a bar in San Antonio, Texas, he and a client, Rollin King, sketched