Southwest Airlines (SA) has made a horrible mistake. As written in the above article, Southwest failed to comply with proper maintenance standards with their airplanes and is now facing a lawsuit from the FAA. So, what does this mean for Southwest? Simply put, they are creating their own barriers to enter the Canadian market. At a time when they are looking to expand into Canada and extend their customer basis, Southwest should be extra cautious in all aspects of their business especially customer safety. By failing to comply with the government set standards, SA has now damaged their brand reputation and reliability- two aspects of the airline business that directly impact profit. Although SA is looking to challenge the lawsuit, I argue that their attempts will be unable to salvage their brand reputation. I acknowledge that this lawsuit will not “run them out of business”, I am, however, perplexed by their recklessness during a pivotal time-period of their business. In moving forward, I would recommend that SA increase their marketing budget to recapture their customer base and re-establish themselves as a “top quality airline”. We have seen with Westjet’s Christmas marketing campaign, that a proper marketing strategy can yield large payoffs with customers. It will be interesting to see how this lawsuit affects SA’s transition into the Canadian market- only time will tell.

References:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2014/11/aeroplane-maintenance