Southwest Airlines, the world’s all-time most successful airline, is under siege. The take-no-prisoners activist investor Paul Singer and his Elliott Management firm want to oust the top executives and most of the directors. That’s no surprise: The stock is where it was ten years ago. CEO Bob Jordan knows he’s on the hot seat. “Our overall results—they are not where they should be,” he told Wall Street analysts in July. “They are not reflective of what we are capable of delivering.” His response, appropriately large-scale, is “a strategic transformation of the business,” a phrase that elicits worry as much as reassurance.
Now customers, employees, alumni, competitors, shareholders, and admirers are all asking the same question: What would Herb do?
