Herb Kelleher, visionary co-founder and chief executive of Southwest Airlines, dies at 87

Herb Kelleher, the charismatic and colorful co-founder of Southwest Airlines, was hardly a cookie-cutter chief executive. He showed up at company parties dressed as Elvis Presley, invited employees to a weekly cookout, handled baggage during the Thanksgiving rush and brought doughnuts to a hangar at 4 a.m. to schmooze with his airline’s mechanics.

He once arm-wrestled an executive from another company to settle a legal dispute and never hid his fondness for cigarettes and bourbon. Yet he was considered a visionary business leader whose record of sustained success at Southwest led Fortune magazine to ask on its cover: “Is Herb Kelleher America’s Best CEO?”

Kelleher, a onetime New Jersey lawyer, won a court case in 1971 allowing Southwest to begin operating in Texas. With its innovative, no-frills approach, Southwest became the country’s most profitable and most imitated airline. Once a feisty upstart, it is now the largest domestic carrier in the United States, with annual revenues approaching $25 billion.

Kelleher, who held top executive roles at Southwest for more than 30 years, died Jan. 3, at age 87. The Dallas-based airline announced his death but did not provide details on where he died or the cause. He was treated for prostate cancer nearly 20 years ago.

When asked if his fivepack-a-day smoking habit may have caused his cancer, Kelleher quipped, “I don’t smoke with my prostate.”

Kelleher’s instinctive, self-taught management style has been studied in business schools and emulated at countless companies.

“Herb Kelleher is arguably the most transformative figure and character in the history of modern aviation,” Texas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens said in a tweet.

At Southwest, Kelleher created what he called a “culture of commitment,” in which employees – not customers – came first. The idea was simple: Happy workers would lead to happy passengers, thus giving the airline a competitive edge.

“What’s important,” Kelleher told Forbes magazine, “is that a customer should get off the airplane feeling, ‘I didn’t just get from A to B. I had one of the most pleasant experiences I ever had and I’ll be back for that reason.’”