Losing another piece of the soul
 

I was A or A+ for five years, although I had not been on WN for several months. What surprised me this past week was the new design for the cocktail napkins: on one side, "Here's to you" is written along the top and "Southwest" and the heart logo along the bottom, with white space in between, while the other side says "Yes, we fly there. 5 countries, 90 destinations, and counting." Apparently, these napkins went into use some time after announcing the new livery in September.
So what, you ask? As many of you know, legend has it that the original WN business plan, the Texas triangle, was drawn up on a cocktail napkin nearly 50 years ago. (I say legend because WN co-founder Rollin King later said the napkin never existed, but why ruin a good story.) Since then, a map of cities served has always been printed on the napkins.
I realize that squeezing in routes south of the border is graphically more difficult, but hardly insurmountable. Dropping the map is just another sign that the fun-loving, maverick, warrior-spirit persona has passed into history and WN is now just another legacy airline.

There's a thread in the UA Forum titled "What's the Stupidest, Least Substantive UA-Related Thing to Complain About?" I hereby nominate this post as the first entry in a similar WN thread. Congrats!

I second that.

Yes, I do.

True, this is not substantive. But when a company has done something for more than 40 years and pointed to it as a symbol of its roots and what distinguishes it from the competition, I can see how the symbolism of removing it might fly over some people's heads.

So, essentially you're upset that Southwest isn't honoring something that never happened?

Yeah, but they still serve Wild Turkey. :cool:

And if it goes I will never fly Southwest again.

Yeah, I know, exaggeration, but I have not seen a silly reason "Never Again" post for a while, so I though I would provide one.

Losing another piece of the soul
 

I will miss the map napkins. In our quest to see all 50 states, we would fill in the states we had been to. The rule was we couldn't add the new state until the departure flight. I have all 50 now, my husband is still missing some. I will have to tell him the maps are gone. Oh well..

The practical reason for removing the maps is that their routes are changing too fast to keep them accurate.

My wife says she learns most U.S. geography from those napkins; I'll need to tell her to look at the magazine.

+1. They always seemed outdated anyway.

Considering that SW dos not fly to every state, I do not really understand this. You took an SW napkin to your non SW flight to fill in the state after departure?

How many flights does it take to learn all the geography possible from a napkin? :D

+1. This thread just gets curiouser and curiouser.