Southwest Airlines

As I prepare to fly to an interview with Southwest Airlines at the end of this week, I thought it would be a good idea to listen to some podcast about the company and its industry. What I found was even better than I thought.
Southwest has its own podcast channel called "RedBelly Radio", named after the color of the belly of Southwest's planes. In most of these podcasts, the host is Steve Haeaser interviews different people in the company that really make a difference, or have an influence of what the company does.
Southwest is a well known company that provides thousands of people each day an affordable alternative to the sometimes expensive transportation industry. Southwest is well known for their fun culture, the fact that their bags fly free, as well as the fact that they are thriving in an industry that struggling financially.
There were multiple podcasts that I listened to, the longest of which was 11 minutes long, and the shortest being just over 2 minutes long.
Most of the time Steve is interviewing a person who is the head of a department, which allows him to get the purpose and reasoning the actions that Southwest takes. I listened to everything from the excellent customer service Southwest provides, to a special 4th of July episode that talked all about the nations independence. My favorite podcasts of the bunch were from Southwests Media Day in 2006. In these episodes, the VP's of each department were talking about something the company was trying to accomplish within their department. It was interesting to hear how Southwest has been able to capitalize their profits by changing the way they clear a plane and turn it around in just a few short minutes before people start to board the plane again for another flight. Southwest saves about $25 million a year by plugging their planes in to power while on the ground, instead of running all the electronics and devices used for cleaning the planes on engines that burn jet fuel. Southwest is the only airline to do this, but because of it and many other changes they have made over the years, they lead the industry in many different areas.
There was also a short podcast that had an intern for the company interviewing two other interns. In the podcast, the interns discussed their experiences and how much they loved what they were doing.
Lets just say that I am TOTALLY STOKED to be able to fly out to Dallas this Friday in order to interview with the company. Wish me luck!
Here is a link to a New York Times article that talks about the culture of Southwest and their ability to thrive in a downed economy: Southwest. Way Southwest