SWA IN BALTIMORE

Group 2 Section B

1. AKANSH VARSHNEY 18PGP012

2. A SAI TEJA 18PGP014
3.K CHANAKYA CHOWDARY 18PGP072
4.K MANI PRATEEP 18PGP073
5.MACHA KRANTI KUMAR 18PGP086
6.MALLEMPATI DHEERAJ 18PGP090
 INTRODUCTION

• Founded in 1967 by Herb Keheller and Rollin King

• Commitment to be the most inexpensive fares and most frequent flights
• Followed ‘Hub-and-spoke’ model and used less congested airports with easy access to large metropolitan areas
• Focused on minimizing the turn around time –non-revenue producing time
• Southwest used only one platform – Boeing 737 to minimize operating costs and training requirements
• Southwest offered open, single class seating to create efficiencies
• Southwest placed huge emphasis on supervisors and considered them most important leaders in the company

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 2. EVALUATE THE PLANE TURNAROUND PROCESS AT BALTIMORE- RESOURCE UTILIZATION,
CAPACITY, BOTTLENECKS, INFORMATION FLOWS, ETC. HOW IS THE PROCESS WORKING?

Southwest decentralized the coordination process and empowered the employees on site to take decision

Resource Utilization
 SOD (supervisors on duty), ops coordinator, ops supervisors, ops agents are the key resources

 Use of internally developed OTIS (Operations Terminal Information System) and FIDS (Flight Information Display System) helps in tracking
flight info

 Operation agents are responsible for flight turnaround coordination

 Ops agent coordinated with 12 functional groups and controlled all aspects of turnaround

 1 ops agent – 1 flight, resulted because of high staffing levels. Helps to dedicate complete focus

Capacity: Regular turnaround time 30 minutes, Emergency turn around time 15 minutes (sometimes even less)

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 2. EVALUATE THE PLANE TURNAROUND PROCESS AT BALTIMORE- RESOURCE UTILIZATION,
CAPACITY, BOTTLENECKS, INFORMATION FLOWS, ETC. HOW IS THE PROCESS WORKING?
(CONT.)

Bottlenecks:
 Flight delays usually squeeze the time for turnaround and since the percent of transfers are high in Baltimore one flight affects one or more

 Avg tenure of employees in Baltimore is less, 27 months, compared to 75 months for southwest as whole which affected their ability to
respond quickly

 “hot passengers” need to directed to their connecting gates with urgency

 “hot bags” need to be expedited to the departure gates for this to happen they have to be loaded properly by upstream agents

 Bag sorting area and “gates” have reached their capacity in 2001 and addition of 7 more flights will lead to bottlenecks.

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 3. WHAT IS THE OPERATIONAL PERFORMANCE AT BALTIMORE ERODING?
WHAT ISSUES DO YOU IDENTIFY THAT REQUIRE ACTION?

Several challenges are being faced by Southwest Airlines

• Operational Challenge: Employees have authority to hold flight, which can result in holding next flights

• Facility Constraint: Bag sorting area is fully utilized, this can be bottle neck in the process

• Employee shortage: Lack of qualified and experienced employees. Overtime can result in high attrition

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 THANK YOU

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