Can you imagine if only one of those "doodles" that you have drawn while on the telephone had turned into a multi million-dollar business? Can you see your picture on the cover of Fortune magazine? Rollin King and Herb Kelleher, the creators of Southwest Airlines could.
             What began as a conversation between attorney Herb Kelleher and his client Rollin King, with a drawing on the back of a cocktail napkin, has become one of the worlds most successful business testimonials.
             Both men saw the need for an intrastate airline in Texas. Current airlines only offered service to the smaller metropolitan areas as an extension of a long flight from elsewhere in the country. These flights were scheduled at the convenience of the airline, not the customer. They were frequently late and were high priced; making them unwanted by businesspersons traveling within the state of Texas. What these two men proposed was a "local" airline that would serve the three major metropolises of Texas: Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. Their goal was to offer a low fare, reliable service to meet the needs of the state's business traveler. Even though it seemed to be a good plan, who could have imagined the road that lay ahead.
             The year 1968 marked the beginning of the legal turmoil that would plague Southwest for years. Since WWII, the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) had regulated the airline industry. Their jurisdiction only applied to airlines that flew across state lines. Southwest's application to start a new airline was approved by the Texas Aeronautics Commission in 1968. Other airlines, such as Braniff and Texas International, kept Southwest out of the air and in the courtroom until the Texas Supreme Court ruled in favor of Southwest's start up. Even so, legal barriers continued to make Southwest Airlines a mere dream until the United States Supreme Court upheld the Texas Supreme Court's decision in December of 1970.
             Although Kelleher had a...