Southwest Airlines

Southwest Airlines
Founded	1967
Operating bases	Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago–Midway, Dallas–Love Field, Denver, Houston–Hobby, Las Vegas, Oakland, Orlando, Phoenix–Sky Harbor
Fleet size	675
Headquarters	Dallas, TX
Website	https://www.southwest.com

Southwest Airlines is a airline based in Dallas, Texas that has a reputation for low fares. The airline started in 1971.^[1] It flies among about a hundred airports, mostly within the United States but also some airports in the Caribbean Sea and Mexico.

Originally, many of Southwest's flights were to airports in the Southwestern United States, such as Dallas Love Field and Houston Hobby Airport, but it also flies to airports in other parts of the country, such as Chicago Midway Airport and Baltimore/Washington International Airport. Southwest Airlines controls most of the gates at Dallas Love Field and most other airlines cannot fly from there.

In 2014, it started international flights.^[2]

The company flies 815 Boeing 737 aircraft. This is more than any other airline.^[3] It only flies the 737. By 2024, 230 were the newest kind, the Boeing 737 MAX.

Southwest Airlines bought the smaller AirTran Airways in 2011 and discontinued the AirTran name. For several years, Southwest was the largest airline in the United States based on number of passengers, but it was not the largest based on distance traveled.^[4]

In 2018, an engine exploded on a Southwest Airlines flight, killing one passenger. That was the first death of a passenger from an aircraft accident on Southwest (earlier passenger deaths were from other causes, such as heart attack and drug overdoses).

In 2025, Southwest started charging for checked baggage and began a transition to assigned seating. A television commercial about the assigned seating showed a lady throwing a watermelon on the floor of a grocery store, thus violating a social norm. The charges for checked baggage and assigned seating are examples of how nothing is sacred anymore (not that anything ever was truly sacred).