{"id":376084,"date":"2026-07-16T22:38:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T22:38:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/376084\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T22:38:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T22:38:20","slug":"dallas-based-southwest-airlines-celebrates-55th-anniversary-richardson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/376084\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas-based Southwest Airlines celebrates 55th anniversary | Richardson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.southwest.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Southwest Airlines<\/a> celebrates the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.swamedia.com\/southwest-stories\/flashback-friday-from-first-flight-to-what-s-next-MCAWFO7XH7BJCRBCG5DPM25HT4SE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">55th anniversary<\/a> of its first flight on June 18.<\/p>\n<p>The Dallas-based airline\u2019s first revenue flight departed from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dallas-lovefield.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Dallas Love Field<\/a> on June 18, 1971, bound for San Antonio, according to the company\u2019s website.<\/p>\n<p>The background<\/p>\n<p>The company was founded by Herb Kelleher, filing with the state of Texas to establish Air Southwest Co. on March 9, 1967. A legal battle followed until the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Kelleher and Rollin King in December of 1970 to clear the way to start operations. The company changed its name to Southwest Airlines Co. on March 29, 1971.<\/p>\n<p>Initially, the company only flew routes within Texas, but now has 52 current <a href=\"https:\/\/www.southwest.com\/en\/flights\/flights-from-dallas\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">destinations<\/a> listed from Dallas Love Field. According to the website, Southwest now operates out of 121 airports across 12 countries.<\/p>\n<p>What else?<\/p>\n<p>Southwest Airlines had more than 134 million <a href=\"https:\/\/www.southwestairlinesinvestorrelations.com\/company-information\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">customers<\/a> in 2025, according to its website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Southwest Airlines celebrates the 55th anniversary of its first flight on June 18. The Dallas-based airline\u2019s first revenue&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[102,104,20440,103,132946,132945],"class_list":["post-376084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-headlines","tag-dallas-love-field","tag-dallas-news","tag-herb-kelleher","tag-southwest-airline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}