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The spirit of Southwest Airlines is exuberant, it's caring, it's dedicated, it's diligent, it's fun, it's rewarding, it's a joy.

Southwest Airlines is successful because the company understands it's a customer service company. It also happens to be an airline.

There are many people talking about access to space and, 'How can we make that cheaper? How can we turn that into a Southwest Airlines versus the big airlines?'

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

A lot of airlines have come and gone.

First, we have to lower our costs to levels that are more competitive. This will prevent the lower-cost airlines from pushing us out of the markets we want to serve. We've made great progress on this front, but we need to keep pushing.

Airlines are interesting. They not only favor celebrities, they court them.

We tried to set up a company that patterned ourselves after Southwest in all the fun, the spirit, the great people, the smile, the efficiency side of it, but we've added some extras that people aren't used to finding on Southwest.

I think airlines have been very much parrots. They'll just follow what everyone else is doing. Why change a model that they're happy in? And it takes someone like myself or Richard Branson who comes from outside the industry to say, 'Hey, let's try something new.'

The people of Southwest have always been my pride, my joy and my love. Their indomitable dedication and esprit de corps have taken Southwest from a three-airplane dream to a 500-airplane reality.