Originally Posted by
dawgdriver
Pulling out of one of the nations most lucrative markets because of the Max? Very atypical move for SWA's traditionally aggressive stance.
Honest Qs: were there no lease or purchase opportunities for used NGs to fill the gap which no one knows when the gap will close? Anyone know if SW is actively looking for used NGs?
United bought 19 -700s which I suspect may have been in part to deny them to SW. UAL hasn't pulled out of markets, delayed new-hire or upgrade classes and, ironically, might use these same -700s to fill the newly acquired slots at their EWR hub.
Not good optics for SW, who can't shift it's market focus to an already overloaded LGA. ISP?
No 'sky-is-falling' or "pointless speculation", just honest questions. SW is on many a pilot's radar screen.
https://www.airliners.net/forum/view...2069&start=200 go down to post 246. According to this (and some other places I've read but don't have the sources handy), UAL didn't buy these planes to deny them from SWA, but are actually getting them
from SWA (GECAS owns them but leased them to SWA, and as part of SWAs -700 early retirement while moving to the MAX they made a deal to retire them and pass them back to GECAS and on to UAL). Also, supposedly this deal isn't new and was in the works a while ago (at least on the SWA end), and just so happens to work out well for UAL...not so much for SWA (if it is accurate).
Supposedly this is when the decision was made to park some of those 700s.
https://leehamnews.com/2018/04/30/so...0-retirements/ https://simpleflying.com/southwest-737-retirement/
Related, today SWA says they are delaying some -700 early retirements, so they got that going for them.
https://centreforaviation.com/news/s...ircraft-924415