DEN
 

I figured I do a little data dive since their is a vacuum of info. Especially on the SWAPA forum. Lots of justified emotion for sure. Most of the data is public on DOT BTS.

I decided to compare "June" of the peak departures for a apples to apples comparison. Look back of twelve months.

Market Share and Passengers

June 2022

• UAL 34.04% and 21.1 million
• SWA 31.70% and 19.6 million
• Skywest 10.78% 6.6 million
• Frontier 9.9% and 6.1 million

June of 2023

• UAL 36.6% and 24.9 million
• SWA 32% and 21.7 million
• Skywest 8.29% and 5.6 million
• Frontier 10.38% and 7.0 million

June of 2024

• UAL 37.86% and 28.2 million
• SWA 33.41% and 24.9 million
• Skywest 6.91% and 5.1 million
• Frontier 10% and 7.4 million

June of 2025

• UAL 39.9% and 29.3 million
• SWA 31.1% and 23.4 million
• Skywest 9.38% and 7.0 million
• Frontier 10.52% and 7.8 million

DEN is the #1 market for SWA in terms of passengers. Of the top 5 O&D markets for SWA, two are out of DEN.

Peak flights(summer)

2022-265 flights
2023-303 flights
2024-300 flights
2025-295 flights
2026-291 flights(projected)

The amount of seats that is offered in DEN.

Seat count(June)

• 2024-1.40 million
• 2025-1.30 million
• 2026-1.35 million(projected)

If you look at it, not much has changed. Not to justify 600 displacements other than the RON issue. The other thing to bring up is it's revenue mangement system. Its not a coincidence when SWA moved to the Amadeus revenue mangement system, the whole network changed and DEN changed with it. The old system looked at each individual flight and historical data. This new system looks at the whole network. Another words the old system looked at 4000 individual flights vs the new system that can look and create 10,000 plus itineraries and see the whole network. Plus it's give them the ability to connect on the partnerships. So now its more about the flowing of passengers and the network. Since RON's rely heavily on local traffic, the new system can create connections. Unfortunately, the terminators and originator's haven't created the numbers they want. They even talked about it on the video. They ignored it as long as they could but at some point the change had to come. Especially when EM came to town. You can't compete with a hub and spoke airline when you have a pure p2p system in DEN. Look at how many planes RON in DEN on UAL vs SWA or used to. UAL has a much larger operation to boot. The escape hatch is the loop hole of displacements. Although not much has changed on the network front from a plane and pilot POV, the way they now flow the airplanes did. I have a feeling that will continue. Bottom line is I don't think DEN will shrink to oblivion or close. They unfortunately created DEN with a p2p network in mind. Now they are changing it to ICO place. Especially in the early morning's and the late evenings. Their is no real penalty for SWA because the CBA doesn't have anything as far as grievances go. They know a lot of crews won't move either. Summer time 2026 should be interesting.

Good statistics here. The big issue here is displacements are to cheap. Most pilots won’t take the paid move. Even averaging an amont of 10 hotel nights used per month, at 200 a night, for 3 months…displacing a pilot costs the company a huge 6,000.00. A rounding error for them. This needs to be addressed in any side letters or items the company wants in the future. No far international agreement until displacement language is updated which to me would at a minimum provide hotels till the pilot is returned to base.

we've had an easy winter in DEN this year. Im not seeing how they'd recover if there was typical winter wx with 200 fewer pilots per seat and the same amount of flights.
As far as I know planes still fly during the day not just terminators or originators.
summer will be interesting for sure. Ill only bid VDT.

Geez Ref 5, now you've done it.

Yes, I agree with Limeade here. The displacements are way, way too cheap for the company so they couldn't care less.

Great stats REF5! A lot has changed, the delta in market share keeps increasing between us and the competition. Well if they can t compete with a hub and spoke, they should evolve. Displacements are just a consequence of mismanagement. If you don’t expand you shrink and numbers just show that between 24/25.

The only way out is to offer the same or better than the competitor. The day we ll see a first class and a larger airframe, we ll be able to relax about the future. For now with a sub standard offering for the customer, we get what we deserve: a very distant second place and a decreasing market share.

Let’s see what our magnificent leadership has in store for us.

Yeah but your displaced brothers and sisters will be bidding straight/premium so there won’t be any VDT…

Assuming we can offload our trips to pick up where we live. I’m not going down to 1 day off a week for this place.

I very well will call off a lot more…commuters oddly have a lower sick bank than ones who don’t commute.

I don’t commute and my sick bank is zero. IDGAS!

Sadly, I’m getting there. I won’t burn it to zero (yet) so I can have some for STD and cover VA accrual in case I go on LOL. Sure won’t be leaving any on the table when I retire…that’s for sure.

realistically how easy is it to offload your schedule?