Metal121

Many rumors are circling, but some words heard around the watercooler:

1. SWA is going international. And will probably crush that market.
2. SWA is considering upgrading to Wi-fi or something similar in all jets
3. SWA sees United as a lame duck (opened 3 bases around United dominated territory). Hmmm....United cant withstand a protracted war with SWA. Thats the bottom line. Operating costs are too high.
4. Buying another airline. Serious discussion is in the works.

Gary Kelly just met with Stockholders on June 2nd, and they want action. He agreed SWA has been holding territory the last 5 years, and now its time to go for the jugular. Cost contol is phenomenal, even with Captains making 350K a year.

So they just announced 3 huge announcemens will be made this year. First one in July timeframe.

Reminds me when at initial training someone asked a super smart bean counter at SWA what the company's 10 year goal is:

He laughed.

"To rule the world"

Never count an airline out when every person working there loves it, and will do anything to make it succeed. Its the SWA way of life...always has been.

jsled

Yawn.......

NoJoy

How do CAs make 350K a year? Are they in the training department?

HSLD

Given SWA's track record I'm sure they'll be able to pull-off something huge. The stock has been flat because they need to work on the revenue side of the balance sheet - looks like any or all of those could do the trick.

Deez340

yea i don't get that one either but one of my FOs last year said that he had come from one of those aviation job fairs and the Southwest guy put his W2 on the overhead that indicated he had made 405k the previous year. The SW guy went on to say that you could still make big money as an airline pilot you just had to be willing to work. (insinuating that he had accomplished this buy picking up over time) could this be true?

John Pennekamp

I find it odd that Southwest is focusing its attention on killing legacy carriers like United when LCCs like Airtran, Virgin America, and Frontier are scratching at their back door.

Why do none of the LCCs compete with each other? It seems they intentionally avoid each others turf. Collusion?

NGINEWHOISWHAT

Yes.

Tom

NGINEWHOISWHAT

I think SWest sees UAL as an easy target, but I'm not buying that snake oil just yet. Time will tell. We all have to worry about Skybust and Slut. As far as Swest going international, I'm not buying that either. Maybe Mexico and Canada or the Islands, but it would be a code share to Europe or Asia and they would certainly not crush that market. It is kind of ironic that Swest helped to depress domestic yields and has now fallen victom to the situation it helped to create. Go figure.

Tom

Deez340

i could use that kind of dough! Wow!

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?