Southwest Airlines rolls out new look for planes

DALLAS — To employees, it was a rock-star moment.

To customers, it was a shrug of the shoulders.

But to Gary Kelly, chairman, president and CEO of Southwest Airlines, it was an evolutionary moment in time for one of the nation’s most successful companies.

McCarran International Airport’s busiest commercial air carrier upgraded its branding strategy and unveiled a plane with a new paint scheme at its corporate headquarters here Monday.

Southwest Airlines has long used a heart and love theme — its headquarters are at Love Field in Dallas — but Kelly took that to a new level when he presented Heart One in a multimedia event that would have made Hollywood envious.

Kelly said the first newly painted plane is dedicated to the company’s 46,000 employees systemwide.

“Our collective heartbeat is stronger and healthier than ever and that’s because of the warmth, the compassion and the smiles of our people,” Kelly told the cheering crowd.

“The heart emblazoned on our aircraft and within our new look, symbolizes our commitment that we’ll remain true to our core values as we set our sights on the future,” Kelly said.

Southwest hopes to have 60 of its Boeing 737 jets repainted with the new theme by year’s end.

Meeting with the media later in the day, Kelly said with all the initiatives Southwest is undertaking, Monday was a day of celebration for the company that offers more than 200 daily flights to and from Las Vegas, feeding the city more than 1 million tourists every month.

“We have a lot to celebrate because so much is going well,” Kelly said in a question-and-answer session with the press.

He stressed that the event was more than the unveiling of a new paint scheme. To him, it is a marker for the success of several ongoing Southwest initiatives:

* The airline is in the midst of absorbing AirTran, the Florida-based discount carrier Southwest acquired in 2010 for $1.4 billion.

* In the past year, Southwest began flying to the Caribbean and Mexico, primarily on routes AirTran has flown. Kelly has said Southwest is eyeing 50 destinations outside the continental United States, meaning the airline isn’t done with international expansion. Routes to Mexico, Canada, Central America and northern South America are locations most frequently mentioned, but Kelly didn’t offer any further clues as to where Southwest would go next.

* Next month, the Wright Amendment repeal will be complete, giving Southwest its first opportunity to fly nonstop routes between its Dallas headquarters and locations outside adjacent states. When that happens, Dallas will become one of Southwest’s top 10 markets and Las Vegas will be one of beneficiaries of the airline’s first nonstop routes.

* Southwest has capitalized on its acquisition of takeoff and landing slots at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, a divestiture required by the merger of American and U.S. Airways. Southwest is now the busiest carrier in the Baltimore-Washington area.

CUSTOM PAINT JOB

But it’s the aircraft color changes that seems to be grabbing the most attention.

The airline is calling its new colors bold blue, warm red, sunrise yellow and summit silver. It ordered a custom-designed typography font with large letter spelling out “Southwest” along the front of the fuselage. The engine pods would be all blue instead of blue and orange, with “southwest.com” in white.

“SOUTHWEST” in all capital letters has disappeared from the tail. So did the red underbelly color.

Kelly said it would take six to seven years to paint the entire 700-plane fleet since the company is opting to make the changes during the routine repainting schedule.

For that reason, the cost of painting the fleet won’t be any more than the cost of regular maintenance. Southwest will have to pay an undetermined amount to upgrade its presence at each airport it serves. The new designs were implemented at Love Field before dawn Monday. There’s no indication when the changes are scheduled at McCarran.

The company also carried over the changes to its website Monday morning and changes are ahead for every business card and every piece of letterhead stationery as supplies run out.

At the end of Monday’s ceremony, a second plane, dubbed Heart Two, made a low-level flyby of corporate headquarters. A newly designed three-color heart will be painted on each aircraft’s midsection.

For many, the unveiling wasn’t a huge surprise. Over the weekend an aviation blogger leaked photos of the jet and they went viral on social media.

Southwest executives laughed it off in the ceremony, attended by about 500 employees jammed into a darkened hangar.

The unveiling was reminiscent of Southwest’s debut of the Nevada One aircraft at McCarran more than a decade ago. Guests were brought into the hangar and at the right moment, the doors were opened and the aircraft was parked outside.

Monday’s unveiling was highlighted by a high-tech IMAX-style video projected on the hangar walls, showing a graphic transformation of the old Southwest livery to the new. Kelly and two other executives broke plastic bottles filled confetti over the nose of the aircraft to christen it.

Contact reporter Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on Twitter.