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Southwest Headquarters Tour (katherinemichel.github.io)

322 points by KatiMichel ↗ HN
After years of flying Southwest, I recently had the opportunity to tour the headquarters in Dallas. I particularly enjoyed seeing the full-motion 737 simulators, Network Operations Center, and TechOps maintenance hangar up close.

43 comments

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throwaway041207
Very cool post. I don't fly much anymore, by choice. But I'm always impressed at the scale and complexity that it takes to operate an airline like Southwest. I appreciate you sharing. Sorry you didn't get to see the actual NOC!
flerchin
SWA does some seriously complex stuff. Neat tour!
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Jordan-117
Being a "superfan" of a corporation is already kind of questionable, but especially so when its leadership has been steadily dismantling so many great customer-friendly things that distinguished them from the competition. I'm glad at least something like this has survived long enough for you to have a neat experience.
bigstrat2003
I was certainly surprised to learn that Southwest even still has fans, given how they went out of their way to undermine any reason one would want to do business with them.
legitster
I adore behind-the-scenes tours. I get there's a lot of work that goes into making it happen, but when you drop into a place where people work, you'll learn so much about real life problems that never make it to the Internet.

The greatest tour I ever had was at the Smokejumper base in remote WA. At any time when they're open, you're allowed to drop in for a tour and whoever is there that day is obliged to give you one. Even in the height of fire season.

We got to see them pack parachutes, repair gear, coordinate parcel drops - everything. Our guide was a 3 year jumper veteran on summer break from his masters degree in linguistics. It was incredible.

Any org that's proud of what they do should aspire to have public tours.

plasticsoprano
Remember, most fire stations will give you a tour, let you sit in the truck, etc, if you just pop in. They love to show off.

Source: My father was a 35 year veteran of the fire department in a large city.

doctoboggan
Yes, field trips were always my favorite part of school. The "How its Made" show scratches a similar itch.

I've noodled with the idea of starting a "fieldtrips for grownups" group but I feel like a wastewater treatment plant is more likely to open their doors for a group of third graders than a group of thirty somethings.

httpz
I highly recommend a free Amazon warehouse tour. You really get to see how the items you order gets picked and packaged.
dylan604
I worked a VR tour shoot of the UPS sorting hub in Louisville. There's a bit of idle time, but once the planes start arriving, it is non-stop action. Each plane is unloaded, packages are sorted/routed to the proper plane, they are then reloaded, and take back off ending in a bit of wow at everything that happened in that short time.

It answered a lot of the "what can Brown do for you" question in a way that no commercial could ever do. Their drop shipping and picking/packing facilities are impressive too including their cold storage areas that are massive warehouse sized freezers.

Also learned that the Louisville airport is listed as an international airport solely because of UPS.

chihuahua
I went on the factory tour at the Airbus factory in Hamburg Germany. It's quite well done, very long (2+ hours), and does a good job of explaining why they're flying giant airplane parts from around Europe for assembly, and what goes on inside all those huge buildings. Among other things, you get to go inside the building where they used to assemble the A380, and now there's 4 smaller planes being worked on in the same space that used to fit one A380.
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gordon_freeman
I had one such tour at Toyota's TMMK (Georgetown, Kentucky) manufacturing plant and witnessing the efficiency with which they were making cars blew my mind!
hexagonsun
oh hey kati! we met at pycon in portland years ago, awesome to see you on the HN frontpage!
reactordev
Cool, I was on a contract last year for their cybersecurity division and implemented observability and AI for their cloud environments. They have a few different cafeterias at the HQ in the different buildings and the SWA store but I never got to see the sim and pilot training areas.
KatiMichel
That sounds awesome. They actually told us during the tour that many employees never see the areas we went to. It was pretty exclusive. As for different break areas, I loved that they had so much memorabilia around. I feel like I saw so many different scenes in there. I think I would have gotten lost in there if I hadn't had a tour guide!
jtchang
Fantastic write up. It's mind blowing how much complexity there is to keep flights going day in and day out.

My guess is all airline NOCs operate 24/7 as flights happen around the clock. Also planes typically don't have much downtime as that loses money so everything has to be a continuous operation.

Cool looking at the pictures of the dashboards. It's nutty to think how much has to be tracked when doing airplane maintenance.

reactordev
there's a lull from 1am - 5am as pilots are sleeping and airports are dormant. It kicks back up again at 5am for the early bird flights. Aircraft parked at the gates will be powered down for the night only to be brought back to life a few hours later. Southwest isn't a major international airline so you won't find them flying 24/7 like Delta or Lufthansa.
miki123211
Not necessarily; some airports are closed at night to keep nearby residents happy. If you're operating a hub-and-spoke airline out of such an airport, there's not much activity going on at night. There's still some; your longhaul flights are still there, so the NOC is likely still open, but there's far less activity than you'd have during the day.
ctippett
I was given a similar tour of Qantas's headquarters, including a walkthrough of their engine workshop and the chance to roam freely inside one of their A380s that was parked up for maintenance. I took heaps of photos, I suppose if this stuff is interesting to others I really should think about sharing them.
linhns
That would be welcomed!
tandydandy
Routing packets? Easy! Routing $100 million equipment with 200 souls on board? A bit more nerve racking. Airline operations is one of the most fun and complex problems on the planet. Thanks for sharing!
kortilla
They interestingly invested very little into it and it imploded on them spectacularly.
Luc
There appears to be a rope-like device on the emergency equipment training board (8th picture), with some bicone shapes.

Anyone know what that is?

Perhaps an escape rope for the pilots?

EDIT: Yup, here it is in action: https://www.jetphotos.com/photo/7389569

borski
I’ve toured the Lucid Motors factory a few times, and man, it’s incredible. Sometimes we forget that the things we use every single day take massive amounts of space, people, and technology to build.

We software people are spoiled with our keyboards and Red Bull :p

ivraatiems
A few years ago, I got a tour of Starbucks headquarters from a friend. One thing I didn't expect: it's literally filled with rooms where people just taste coffee, all day, every day, to make sure it's what it's supposed to be.

It's crazy how even something which feels mediocre so much of the time - fast-food coffee, a budget airline - requires an enormous amount of human effort to pull off reliably.

(And yes, you can dislike Southwest as a corporation and still think things like flight attendant training and plane simulators are cool. Come on folks.)

xyzelement
// We later learned that sadly only 6% of Southwest pilots are women,

I am not sure that's a "sadly". I used to fly a lot and talk to flight crews. Aviation is a ton of crazy schedules and nights away from home (I assume this is well known)

From a family perspective it's bad enough if dads missing from the house for days at a time, much more catastrophic if mom's not around like that.

(A child's relationship with mom vs. dad is very different. Kids need their mom in a very different way that we can't just paper over)

pants2
TIL that pilots can't have a full beard because oxygen masks can't make a seal. Guess that's where the pilot moustache stereotype comes from.
mfkp
This actually isn't the case anymore, plenty of non-US airlines allow beards and the new masks still provide perfect oxygen flow. It's more of a "professional image" thing in the US.
matthewhull
I don't know if if it's still there, but there used to be a really huge display of memorabilia and photos in their pilot training center along their first floor hallway that went on forever with photos spanning their history: from crewmembers dressed up in toga at company parties to NASA astronauts that became pilots, some of it really throwing back to their old school wild west culture.

Highly recommend reading Hard Landing by Thomas Petzinger for a little more background on SWA rough and tumble startup story with Herb K.

Stratoscope
When I was a very young kid in Eugene, Oregon, we always kept a supply of Chet's Tamales in the freezer. They always had one black olive hidden somewhere in the middle. It wasn't just a tamale, it was a treasure hunt!

In first grade, we took a field trip to Chet's factory. It was so interesting to see how they made tamales in quantity–and they sent us each home with a free tamale.

Another Oregon treat is Tillamook cheese. My family went on one of their tours. They still offer tours today, but you are in a glassed-in area on the second floor overlooking the line. Back then, we got to walk right up to the vats of cheese curd. They trusted us (and instructed us!) to not poke our fingers in.

Much more recently, a friend who works at La Terra Fina in Union City, California took me on a private tour of their manufacturing plant. You may have seen LTF's quiches and dips at stores like Safeway and Costco, and private label versions at other stores.

I think they were making the Artichoke-Jalapeño dip that day. What struck me was the contrast between the first part of the production line and the rest. They start with huge blocks of cream cheese, industrial size cans of artichokes and jalapeños, and dump them into a giant mixer by hand.

Once a batch is mixed and gets a taste test, the rest of the line is high speed and highly automated. Plastic tubs come through and get the dip squirted into them, the plastic seal and top goes on, and then a labeling machine attaches each label.

Pro tip: If you like their dips, try them warm. My friend had not actually done this, so I asked Claude for a recipe:

---

One time a friend served some La Terra Fina dip warm at a party. I'd only had it cold before, and it was a revelation. I forgot to ask for his recipe, but I believe he warmed it in the oven for a while and then under the broiler for a bit to lightly brown the top. What would be a good temperature and time for the first step, assuming a typical shallow casserole pan?

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La Terra Fina dips warm up beautifully — the cream cheese base gets silky and the flavors meld in a way cold just can't match.

For a shallow casserole dish, I'd suggest:

Oven step: 325°F for about 20–25 minutes. Low and slow is the move here — you want it heated through without the dairy breaking or getting grainy. A shallow dish speeds things up compared to a deep one, so check at 20 minutes. You're looking for it to be bubbling gently around the edges.

Broiler step: 2–4 minutes on high, watching closely. The top should get lightly golden with a few darker spots — that slight caramelization on the cheese and any onion bits is where the magic happens. Don't walk away during this part.

A few notes:

• Pull it from the fridge 15–20 minutes before baking if you can, so it's not stone cold going in

• The spinach artichoke and artichoke jalapeño varieties both do particularly well warm

• Serving with something sturdy (crostini, pita chips, thick tortilla chips) beats thin crackers when it's hot and scoopable

The broiler browning is really what elevates it — that textural contrast between the creamy interior and the slightly crispy top is what probably made it feel like a revelation.

altacc
The surprise for me here is the social media command center. I know businesses have staff dedicated to social media but hadn't expected a company to have them at a scale & operational level that necessitates a command center setup, with desks facing screens on the walls.
oe
I find it fascinating how with flight attendants there’s such a gap between what your everyday work is and what you need to know. Like every flight is just normal, but then once a career you might find yourself in a plane that’s now upside down on the tarmac and need to evacuate it in one minute. And they manage to do that.
KatiMichel
I had the same thought. I had no idea before the tour the extent to which they have to master the emergency skills, despite probably never needing to use it. On the other hand, passengers don't have to practice, but I sometimes hear it be said that you shouldn't assume a flight attendant will be there to help you in the event of an emergency!
timdiggerm
> Ask them about the chickens hanging from the bottom.

Maybe you should tell me about the chickens, since I am unlikely to ever get to ask anyone at Southwest HQ.

KatiMichel
A worker was superstitious and wanted to hang rubber chickens from the bottom of the full-motion simulators. IIRC, one was hung beneath a simulator, then removed, and the simulator stopped working. So, the management caved and allowed rubber chickens to be hung beneath all of them. That worker had a simulator dedicated to him and they put two rubber chickens under that one.
CGMthrowaway
Rare photo of a crash axe (half cropped out) on the wall next to the other safety equipment. A lot of people don't realize there are weapons inside the cabin