That’s bad news on many levels. Bummer

Why?


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Pulling out of part of the largest market in the USA for one.

Capitulating a chunk of business because of the Max disaster two (as the article states). It’s a shame SW has to do something akin to shrinking to profitability over this.

It will add to the public’s negative perception of the Max if the country’s largest operator of it states they are pulling out of markets because of it.

And (I’ll admit this is selfish) SW is on my radar and EWR is my home airport, so commuting would see limits.

I have to hope the situation will all reverse itself sooner than later. Who knows

It does suck for the business reasons but more importantly and selfishly the hundred of commuters that used you guys to get to EWR . You guys are always great.

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.

With the tumor removed, maybe the cancer won't spread

Probably more a financial decision than a Max issue. We should have 60 Max planes in operation by Oct. So sure, when nearly 10% of your fleet is parked in a parking lot in a political hit job you have to do what you can to keep the rest of the operation flowing. So mgt prob looked and saw EWR as something they could sacrifice due to poor financial numbers.

Also allows those planes to be redeployed to more lucrative markets like HI, etc.

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

The planes UA got were SW planes. They were too expensive mix wise to keep. It sucks pulling out of a market but they will focus those planes on more profitable routes and fill the NY gap using LGA where we got more gates.
Management doesn't share their strategy with us who knows what their plan is but I'm sure they have a room full of people thinking stuff up and then a room of people backing them up. Plus our amazing F-teen guys backing them up.