The story of Southwest Airlines begins not with an airline at all, but with a business proposition so simple it could fit on a bar napkin — because, famously, it did. In 1966, Rollin King, a Texas entrepreneur who operated a small commuter airline service, sat down with his attorney and close friend Herb Kelleher at the St. Anthony Club in San Antonio and sketched a triangle on a cocktail napkin connecting three Texas cities: Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. King's pitch to Kelleher was straightforward. He had observed that these three major Texas cities were connected primarily by ground transportation, that Braniff International and Texas International Airlines served the routes with high fares set by the Civil Aeronautics Board, and that a low-cost, high-frequency intrastate carrier — one that would be exempt from CAB regulation because it operated entirely within Texas — could take market share from both the airlines and the family automobile. Kelleher, who had a reputation as a brilliant if unconventional attorney with a love for Wild Turkey bourbon and a gift for the theatrical, told King he was crazy. Then he agreed to help. The legal battle to get Southwest into the air lasted longer than the flights it eventually operated. Braniff and Texas International recognized immediately that a low-fare competitor would disrupt their profitable Texas routes, and they used every available legal mechanism to prevent Southwest from launching. The Texas Aeronautics Commission approved Southwest's application in 1967, but the incumbent carriers obtained a state court injunction that prevented the airline from operating. Kelleher, working largely for free because the fledgling company had no money to pay him, took the case to the Texas Supreme Court, which ruled in Southwest's favor. The incumbents then filed a motion with the U.S. Supreme Court. Kelleher, by his own account, called his client Lamar Muse — who had been hired as Southwest's first CEO — and told him that if they wanted to start flying, they had to do it now, before the Supreme Court issued a stay. On June 18, 1971, Southwest Airlines flew its first commercial flights, from Dallas Love Field to San Antonio and Houston Hobby Airport. The original fleet consisted of three Boeing 737-200s. The initial fares were thirteen dollars one-way from Dallas to Houston and Dallas to San Antonio — a price that generated immediate traffic but also immediate losses, because the airline's cost structure could not support such aggressive pricing for long. The early years were ones of genuine financial precarity. Muse, a tough and experienced airline operator, made the decision that Southwest needed to either cut aircraft or cut fares, and he chose to cut aircraft — selling one of the airline's four planes to raise cash — while maintaining the frequency and low-fare promise. That decision set a template for Southwest's operating philosophy: protect frequency and low fares even at the cost of short-term pain. Southwest did not go gently into the low-fare market; it marketed itself with a boldness that shocked the aviation establishment. The original flight attendant uniforms — hot pants, go-go boots, and white vinyl boots designed by Neiman Marcus — were deliberately provocative, intended to generate publicity in an era when advertising budgets were minimal. The airline called its hostesses Love Birds, offered Love Potions (cocktails) to passengers, and built its entire early brand identity around the Dallas Love Field home base in a way that was simultaneously ironic, playful, and commercially savvy. Kelleher was named CEO in 1982, and under his leadership Southwest began the expansion that would transform it from a regional Texas curiosity into a national carrier. The airline's expansion beyond Texas was enabled by the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978, which dismantled the Civil Aeronautics Board's authority over routes and fares and allowed carriers to enter and exit markets at will. Southwest moved methodically, entering new markets one at a time, establishing a pattern of high-frequency, low-fare service that generated dramatic traffic stimulation — the so-called Southwest Effect — in every market it entered.