Contributor
Edward Shelswell White
Edward Shelswell-White is Regional Director - Properties for Southwest Airlines, and is based in Dallas where he lives with his wife, Elly and two daughters, Victoria and Catherine. In his eleven years in Properties, Edward has overseen Southwest’s airport expansions in the Eastern U.S., most notably in Baltimore/Washington, Philadelphia, the Northeast, Florida, and Nashville; has negotiated airport leases in 17 Southwest cities; and has worked with airports to make financial decisions to lower Southwest’s airport costs significantly. Before joining the Properties Department, Edward was based in Los Angeles where, as Southwest’s District Marketing Manager, he was in charge of Field Marketing in Southern California and Las Vegas during Southwest’s rapid West Coast expansion in the early 1990s. While in L.A., he experienced a magnitude 6.7 earthquake, which he believes was the best possible preparation for the current state of the airline industry. Prior to joining Southwest in 1989, Edward spent four years in commercial banking and venture capital. He was raised in Birmingham, Alabama, and is a 1985 graduate of Vanderbilt University, where he majored in Economics. His thoroughly-researched thesis, “The devastating marginal effects on knowledge retention from continually having ‘just one more drink’ at three o’clock in the morning” was never published because, well, he just sort of forgot to submit it, thereby proving his point.
Recent Activity:
Recent Activity Posts
The answer lies "in here"
Nov 08 2006
I was in Philadelphia (PHL) on a Tuesday morning in early October when one of our non PHL-based Employees came in. He had arrived in PHL late the previous day and had left his laptop on the plane. Hoping to find it before flying back out later that day, he was understandably anxious, and one of our PHL Leaders was doing his best to help him. After a few minutes, however, it appeared that the... read more
Living Without Liquids - Post script
Sep 14 2006
My recent post on the subject seems to have raised as many questions as I had tried to answer. In short, there is still a lot of confusion about what can, and cannot, be taken through the security checkpoint and, once through security, what items you might have purchased on the concourse can be taken on the airplane. Since these restrictions are subject to change by our friends at TSA when they... read more
Living without liquids - what it's really like to fly post-August 10
Sep 01 2006
You've probably heard that the new prohibitions against liquids and gels in carryon baggage are supposed to produce longer lines at ticket counters and at security checkpoints. For what it's worth, as someone who has flown several times since August 10, I cannot discern any actual effects on the Customer waiting times.
Our own internal stats bear out that one impact of the new restrictions has... read more
Catching Flies
Jun 01 2006
Tom Greer, airport director at Monterey, CA (MRY) is one of my favorite people in the aviation world. Like me, Tom is from a suburb of Birmingham (BHM). Unlike me, Tom has at his disposal a litany of Southern sayings that are deeper in meaning than you might at first realize. One of my favorites of these is, "you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."
The first time I heard Tom say this... read more
IAD A Dream
Jul 13 2006
Today's release of our schedules and fares into our newest airport, Washington Dulles ("IAD"), reminded me that our initial announcement that we would be entering the IAD market raised a lot of questions from Employees and from other Southwest stakeholders. Along with several of my fellow Employees, I visited IAD the evening of and morning after that April 4th announcement to get a closer look at... read more
