Succession planning has been a major priority at Southwest for quite some time. We think we have come up with a winning combination of talent for our company reorganization.

Your employees come first. And if you treat your employees right, guess what? Your customers come back, and that makes your shareholders happy. Start with employees and the rest follows from that.

I forgive all personal weaknesses except egomania and pretension.

I tell my employees that we're in the service business, and it's incidental that we fly airplanes.

I guess the worst moment I ever had in business was the fear that Southwest Airlines wouldn't get off the ground.

When I started working on Southwest Airlines, I kid you not, only people flying on business and very wealthy people ever flew.