Originally Posted by John Pennekamp

Agreed. SWA could fly to the islands or Mexico, but technically that's not international since the industry includes North America in the domestic route system.

It's not likely that the various long range 737 variants are going to get ETOPS certification for an overwater flight to Europe any time soon. I've never flown one, but I doubt they even have the legs for it to begin with. I'm not putti ng much stock in SWA going "international". Even if they found a way, they're not going to "crush" the market. Delta is currently crushing the market flying 767-300ERs to every major city in Europe, including Eastern Europe. SWA can't touch that.



Isn't it? The reason is that others have copied SWA's business model and even improved it. I don't beoieve JBlue has reached critical mass yet. Frontier is still a regional player, and Virgin hasn't left the ground yet. Airtran, however, made a hybrid of SWA's point to point flying, and traditional hub flying, and it seems to have worked very well. Especially if they get a hold of Midwest, they are going to be a very formidable national player for everyone.

Which brings us back to the question- why is SWA going for the legacy carriers? Are they admitting that they can't beat Airtran at their own game, so they're going after the dinosaurs?