Why does Southwest stay domestic?
 

It might be to late now but i thought they could expand to fly to all the vacation destinations in mexico and the carib. Any thoughts as to why they never tried?

It was hard enough to leave Texas.

Heyas,

Because their management doesn't believe their pilots capable of international flying.

<ducks>

Seriously....the real reason is that SWA is the latest member of the Legacy Club, complete with miserable labor relations. Herb is gone, and management styles rarely survive such a change.

Herb was more than management, he was OWNERSHIP, who believed in fair pay for a day's work, and knew which side of his bread was buttered, and was in it for the LONG haul, which meant making good decisions for long term survival.

OTOH, current management is like the rest of the miserable managers at other airlines...bean counters with no real stake in the airline (stock options don't count...they only serve to drive bad short term decisions). They LIKE to outsource. Makes the bottom line look great.

Welcome to the club, guys. Here's your pin, t-shirt and souvenir inflatable rat.

Nu

I thought it was because of the turn around time coming back to the states and dealing with customs. It would be hard for Southwest to turn the a/c in 30 min after coming back for Mexico or Canada. Opinions?

Well a Smart manager would say, hey lets start Southwest "international" and do flights to the carib. and mexico from a main hub and make the turn times longer if you have too. Thats really sad, if its what you guys say it is about the airline changing after herb left -its hard to want to go there anymore.

I don't think turn around is a problem, that could easily be fix. The real problem is cost. In Latin America "operational charges” are high, Goverments will squeeze anybody that comes in. TACA,LanChile, will lobby any Gov.in their favor.

It's all about cost. They're the only large airline that knows how to keep costs under control and it costs more to fly international. I'm sure they're also looking at whether it fits into their business plan of short turns. Those markets are notoriously low yield as well. I wouldn't complain about a management that has managed to keep debt to a microscopic level especially when I look around at others (mine included) that have door busting debt coming due. When the cost benefit analysis shows it makes sense I'm sure they'll do it.

Back in the "Good ol days" when SWA was just a pup, wasn't going North of the Red River consider Int'l??;)

Seriously, why try and 're-invent' something when it is doing very well. If it isn't broken (especially in the industry), don't "screw" with it.

BTW....Thanx USMC lol

Keeping It Simple S...

Because they would be getting into the legacy airline business...

Competing with people who already know how to do hub and spoke (sort of).

Attempting to merge their unique operational program with a separate system capable of dealing with all of the international problems mentioned above. Hard to a 20 minute cattle-call turn when you have to check passports and the terrorist watch list...pretty much impossible at an international outstation.

I think long-haul would be out of the question. Canada would be reasonable, latin America also possible. Actually they were in serious talks with one or more regionals about doing just that before the bottom fell out of the economy.

I admire them for being disciplined enough to stick with their proven formula.