Southwest Airlines: Still cool after all these years

Rather than conservative, pressed, navy-colored uniforms, flight attendants used to wear hot pants. Today, they’re dressed in khaki shorts.

Instead of boring, predictable safety announcements, the crew tends to make the delivery of even the most rote information an opportunity for entertainment.

The company’s New York Stock Exchange ID is LUV.

It has famously settled disputes by arm wrestling.

You get the idea: everything at Southwest is done with a sense of humor.

So it’s hardly a surprise that this year’s shareholder meeting was more than a get-together characterized by a CEO monotoning a series of boring statistics.

Instead, the company did some internal talent searching and came up with a headline act for the meeting: flight attendant and rapper David Holmes, who was invited to rap the company’s general accounting principles to an audience of rhythmically challenged but enthusiastic shareholders.

Holmes had already achieved some national notoriety before the shareholder meeting rap, which has become a YouTube sensation. The Wall Street Journal and CNN had both featured Holmes’ cabin announcement raps:

But after successfully delivering the “GAAP Rap” without missing a beat, Holmes might just find himself with some new job offers: this video has had more than 22,000 views since it was uploaded a week ago:

What other company can brag that videos from its shareholder meeting have mass appeal (not to mention a 5-star rating) on YouTube?

Feature photo: theerin