the company was helping the company navigate legal concerns and as an advisor to the operation and later as general counsel. Lamar Muse was hired as CEO, but after struggles between Muse and King escalated over the next several years, Muse resigned in 1978. Kelleher was installed as chairman of the board in March of that year and the board appointed him as temporary CEO until hiring Howard Putnam as the new CEO and president. In 1981, after Putnam left to head Braniff Airways, he was appointed the full-time CEO and president, positions he held for 20 years. Under Kelleher's leadership, Southwest succeeded by a strategy of offering low fares to its passengers, eliminating unnecessary services, using a single aircraft type (the Boeing 737) (except for use of the Boeing 727 and use of MD-80 by TranStar and 717 by AirTran), avoiding the hub-and-spoke scheduling system used by other airlines in favor of building point-to-point traffic, and focusing on secondary airports such as Chicago-Midway (instead of Chicago-O'Hare), Dallas Love Field (instead of DFW), and Orange County, California but later some hub flights were operated at airports, such as ATL, LAS, PHX, MDW, DEN, STL, and BWI and some major airports, like LGA, LAX, SFO, and DEN. The company he founded and built has consistently been named among the most admired companies in America in Fortune magazine's annual poll. Fortune has also called him perhaps the best CEO in America. Kelleher's outrageous personality created a corporate culture which made Southwest employees well known for taking themselves lightly but their jobs seriously. His culture-leadership was well-demonstrated in an arm-wrestling event in March 1992. Shortly after Southwest started using the "Just Plane Smart" motto, Stevens Aviation, who had been using "Plane Smart" for their motto, threatened a trademark lawsuit, which was resolved between Kelleher and Stevens Aviation CEO Kurt Herwald in an arm-wrestling match, now known as "Malice in Dallas". Kelleher lost the match, but was allowed to use the slogan in exchange for a $5,000 charitable donation and conceding Stevens' legal claim to the slogan. In March 2001, Kelleher stepped down as CEO and president of Southwest. He passed the CEO role onto James Parker and the president role to Colleen Barrett, although he remained chairman. In July 2007, Southwest announced that Kelleher would step down as chairman and resign from the board of directors in May 2008. The retirement of Barrett