Originally Posted by
REF 5
IF, I say IF SWA does $4.00 as share in 2026(which is the low end of the guidance)or even as Jamie Baker put it(not my words)as he did a double upgrade on the stock, he put it at $5.00 to $6.00 a share, "SWA operating margins could be as high as Delta's in 2026". We'll see. Believe it or not its earnings are not based on "premium". Competition is good. RASM for SWA in the first quarter is guided to be up 9.5%. I have not seen that since the last decade for most carriers, let alone SWA. Proof will be in the report cards that they give out every 90 days. I reserve judgment until then.
As far as SEA goes, Delta and even NW were always number two. That hasn't changed in decades and probably won't anytime soon. The market share gap is as wide as a A350 in SEA. The only gap that is bigger is AUS. BOS is a different story. I agree that JBLU has issues. But don't think UAL or AAL will sit idle either. UAL is catching Delta very fast. UAL has a much bigger international footprint than Delta. More widebodies than Delta too. So far now you are top dog on the earnings front.
DL actually has a significantly larger international footprint and cargo footprint than UAL. The majority of those footprints is operated by cheaper JV labor though, which is why DL has larger profit sharing checks and can afford to spend billions on turf wars, SEA being one of them.
Originally Posted by
flyguy81
Supposedly the lounge in HNL is under construction. No idea if/where others will be built. Hot food and first class isn’t our thing….prob never will be. If people want to be wined and dined with subpar reheated food, tv’s in the headrest that is constantly interrupted by every PA, etc, they can pay for that.
We changed to charge for bags and seats with a bit of a legroom upgrade for those who want it. No idea if/when we get another fleet…maybe we’ll be like Westjet and get a fleet of older 767’s to get the foot in the door while they shop 787’s. Who knows?
We are and probably always will be a LCC (not sure about the low cost part since any fares are the same as everyone else’s now)…but that isn’t likely to change anytime soon.
Honestly, I’d be happy to see us start making $ again and for planning to get their crap together and quit screwing with base manning. Former will prob happen before the latter.
If I was a WN pilot I'd definitely be more interested in management's ability to sustain selling a LCC+ product at the same price as a legacy carrier product than I would be about the base manning situation, it's pretty clear that doing it on the same routes as legacy carriers out of large hubs like DEN and ATL isn't going to be viable long term. Obviously commuting long-term sucks after getting displaced, but working for a carrier with a new and unproven business model is more unnerving when you're hitched to the airline for the duration of your decades long career. Frontier and Spirit have been doing the assigned seating thing forever and Spirit had the big front seat, both charged for checked bags, but neither could really compete once basic economy was fully rolled out at the legacy carriers. WN's bread and butter that built the company into the powerhouse of today was no-frills P2P flying from lower cost airports. Hopefully they can leverage the P2P network with the new frills and avoid costly turf wars in places like DEN, ATL, etc.