This emphasis on turning air travel into bus travel. How quickly can we turn a plane? How quickly can we board people? How many tickets can we oversell hoping/expecting some people won't show leading to stressed staff and passengers getting bumped? How many flights a day can we push with no wiggle room so that a single storm in Chicago means your San Diego to Houston flight is 2 hours late. That whole mentality that it's ok to run the business that way.
I suppose there's some parallels to be drawn to software. I've often heard things like targeting 80% of memory / CPU / networking so that you have some slack for unexpected events. It seems like Southwest focuses on running as close to 100% asset utilization as possible. It's not necessarily optimal when there are issues, but I find it hard to fault them for what I consider to be a pretty legitimate business choice.
