Whether your a SouthWest fan or not you’ve got to admire chairman Herb Kelleher, 77, who will chair his 31st and last Southwest Airlines Co. annual meeting Wednesday, ending one of the longest and most colorful tenures for a head of a U.S. airline.

As of Thursday, he’ll just be an ordinary employee of Dallas-based Southwest – if Mr. Kelleher can ever be considered ordinary. His $400,000-a-year contract keeps him at Southwest into 2013. It does not state his duties.

And Mr. Kelleher says he expects to still be coming to work every day in 2013, when he turns 82.

“I would guess so. I enjoy it. I enjoy work. You can refer to me as a drone, a worker bee. I always have enjoyed it,” Mr. Kelleher said Friday, adding, “I hope I can still be useful.”

Just for comparison take a look at what’s changed with SouthWest from 1978 until today.

Category                           1978         2007
Airplanes                             13            520
Employees                          1,119         33,261
Net income                       $17 million  $645 million
Destinations                           9             64
States of operation                  1             33
Average flight distance            235 miles    629 miles
Average passenger trip distance    297 miles    815 miles
Annual passengers                3.5 million  101.9 million
Average fare                       $21.99       $106.60

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 3:41 pm and is filed under Airlines, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.