Southwest Airlines LUV
The three reasons
- 1
Southwest lost 50%+ of market value and EV is below the value of its aircraft alone
- 2
From best-in-class to worst-in-class margins: 1,300 bps below 2018, 900 bps below peers
- 3
Insular leadership has rigidly rejected industry-standard commercial innovations for 15 years
Primary demands
- Significant Board change including new independent directors with external airline experience
- Replace Executive Chairman Gary Kelly and CEO Bob Jordan with new leadership from outside Southwest
- Retire the Executive Chairman structure
- Form a new Board-level committee to conduct a comprehensive business review of strategy and operations
- Modernize commercial strategy (assigned seating, premium products, basic economy, ancillary revenue)
KPIs cited
Pattern membership
Where this document fits across the library's 12 rhetorical / structural patterns.
Notable slides (6)
Notes
Polished campaign with dedicated 'Stronger Southwest' microsite branding (StrongerSouthwest.com) and a yellow/blue color palette mirroring Southwest's own. Strong SCQA structure: Situation (legacy + scale on p.6-7), Complication (margin/EV collapse p.17-22), Question (more time won't fix p.27), Answer (board+leadership+review p.41-46). Memorable rhetorical devices: 8-row red downward-arrow scoreboard (p.10), exit-sign metaphor (p.27), 'Worst' shareholder survey grid (p.38), Herb Kelleher 'if you don't change, you die' quote weaponized against current management (p.8), and the +77% $28-to-$49 upside reveal (p.13). Heavy reliance on third-party validators (J.P. Morgan, Barclays, Cowen, Deutsche Bank, Melius, even Ryanair's O'Leary). Valuation is multiple-comparison only (peer EBITDAR x 4.8x); no DCF or sum-of-parts. Backed by 18 months of research, 130+ former-employee interviews, shareholder survey, and 2,000-person consumer study (p.5). Outcome: Bob Jordan was eventually retained but Gary Kelly stepped down as Chairman in October 2024 and 6 directors departed in a settlement — partial win — but at extraction time leave campaign_outcome as 'unknown'.