Vintage Southwest Airlines

Their CEO, Gary Kelly, has kept the company out of the tabloid headlines, and by all accounts done a great job balancing the P&L, the volatile cost of fuel, and keeping a reserve account of $2.4 billion, for a rainy day according to an interview in the October issue of Smart Money.  Analysts say that figure is under $1 billion, but still, it’s cash in the bank.

With all my affection for the airline and its ability to get me to Columbus, Indianapolis and Spokane, something dawned on me while flying back to San Jose from Tampa recently – Southwest Airlines is NOT eco-friendly.

My trip from Tampa included a stop in Houston and a plane-change in San Diego, so in all there were three legs of the trip.  Each leg, or flight, was nearly full meaning there were in the neighborhood of 180 passengers on every departure.  As the beverage cart made its way down the aisle toward me, I realized Southwest, and for that matter, most, if not all, airlines are wreaking havoc on the environment.

Since most of the passengers requested a soft drink or water, the flight attendants cracked open dozens of Coke and Sprite cans and bottles of water to quench our collective thirsts.  Three passengers per can…50 cans per flight…maybe 150 cans of soda for the time I was on the plane?  And how many flights does Southwest have each day of the year, several hundred?

That is a lot of aluminum.  Yes, they recycle so they get three-cents back per can, but that is not the point.  It’s plain wasteful, and if my calculations are in the ballpark, Southwest pops open about 30,000 cans of soda each and every day of the year, which comes out to about 1.1 million aluminum cans each year!

One MILLION cans of soda, Mr. Kelly!  Unless you are a shareholder in ALCOA, that is obscene.  Actually it is obscene even if you are/were.

According to your published financials, the company lost roughly $16 million in Q3.

Mr. Kelly, here is how you can make up a big chunk of that: Lose the cans and bottled water and install a soda dispenser and serve filtered water.  People only order a few kinds of soda anyhow, so offer up Coke, Sprite, Mr. Pibb and Ginger Ale, along with carbonated water.  Partner with Brita, the water filter folks, and voila, there’s a half-million dollars saved annually.

It would make a great TV commercial on how you crushed the can.  Coke still gets paid, but you can make them look like a champ, too.

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