Bunch of idiots in quoted in the article:

Ohio State University professor Nawal Taneja, who focuses on the airline industry, said Southwest will use the technique only on its bigger cities that have a sufficient "critical mass" to support banks of incoming and outgoing flights.
"They won't do it in cities where there are only two flights a day, one in the morning, one in the evening," said Taneja, who chairs Ohio State's aviation department in its engineering college. "Then, if you miss the morning flight, you're stuck there for the rest of the day."


Southwest (or any medium sized airline or bigger) doesn't serve ANY city with just two flights a day. Southwest only serves a city if it can do a number of cities with a number of flights.


Another obvious part of the article is that while they re-time flight to connect in their "pilot and FA bases" (I guess SW doesn't have hubs) to make some flights fuller, they "Jordan said the schedule changes are only part of the reason for fewer empty seats on Southwest flights. The carrier's "bags fly free" advertising campaign is obviously paying off, as well as efforts to trim less successful flights."


Amazing management there - some flights get fuller because of schedule adjustments so you trim flights that are less successful. Wow - if only other airlines thought of that.



I'm not trashing SWA - I'm trashing the aviation consultants that think SWA is nirvana. Sure - this hubbing will increase load factors, but it also increases costs. (you need more staff to handle the hub) Also, sometimes at the hub outbound flights get delayed because a flight has a large number of connecting pax and bags.