Dallas-Atlanta: Southwest Airlines Ready to Buy Air Tran

[WestbankNOLA]

Originally Posted by johnatl

LOL! The only Southwest flight I have ever taken was Shamu, from Phoenix to San Diego.

I've been on two or three Shamus, the 700, 500, and the 300. Either that or I rode the 300 twice, but I want to say that I was on 735, because I hate those.

[Cowboys fan in Houston]

Originally Posted by kidphilly

LANative - I heard some rumors that Southwest is looking to put flights in and out of Trenton/Mercer airport in NJ - Anyword on that? US Air used to run some RJs out of the there to Boston and DC. Would love to see that airport get going, Another Option there with an expanded SW would be Interesting, Though the expanded SW will have a decent size operation out of Philly combined with AT (more trouble for US Air) but i do not believe Southwest flys out of EWR, AirTran may

My other Question is I thought the cheaper airlines shyed away from the hub and spoke, I would never use a low cost airline with connections so why would Atlanta be so attractive in that sense?

I havent heard too many rumors about Trenton. It would not surprise me, however with the impending buy out, I would not look for many new destinations soon. They have too many other details to sort out right now. Leveraging synergy between two airlines is very difficult and they are probably focusing on how to integrated their current route networks before they add more. However in the future, I would not rule it out.

Southwest does not really shy away from having hubs, they just dont like to call them hubs. If we look at Denver, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Baltimore, and Chicago (MDW), they resemble small hubs. What Southwest does shy away from is the spoke part of it. Most of their destinations have flights to at least 3 other destinations. For example Oklahoma City serves Houston, Dallas, St. Louis, and Kansas City. None of these destinations would be large enough to technically be a hub. However Southwest also serves Denver, Phoenix, and Las Vegas from OKC. These destinations are more characteristic of a hub.

So Southwest does shy away from the spoke part of the hub and spoke system, but not the hub part. In a way, Southwest's model resembles a bunch of mini hubs as opposed to one or two mega-hubs.

From a profit and market share stand point, Southwest's bread and butter has always been small-midsized markets with minimal amounts of international and first/business class traffic (like Oklahoma City, Kansas City, St. Louis, New Orleans, etc. and to a lesser degree Denver and Phoenix) over larger more international and premium markets (Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, New York, Dallas, Philly, Boston, San Francisco, DC). The reason is that most of the larger more international markets have large hubs from international airlines in their midst. The international and premium travelers avoid Southwest for obvious reasons (no international presence and no first class). As a result, Southwest marketshare in those cities is much smaller. Whereas Southwest knows that no one will fight them for the Oklahoma City-St. Louis or Albany-Las Vegas (as examples) traffic. They charge whatever they want and bring in heaps of cash. That is the reason Southwest was able to take St. Louis from American. Not enough premium or international traffic, but tons of domestic traffic to major business centers. Their operating cost made it an easy steal.

This varies from Air Tran which operates on a defined hub and spoke model. They also have more of a focus on larger markets. It will be interesting to see how this works out in the route planning and logistics department.

[Spade]

Originally Posted by AlGreen

southwest needs to fix them raggedy planes

But they can keep the service. Far better than United and USairways.

[AlGreen]

Originally Posted by Spade

But they can keep the service. Far better than United and USairways.

i'm not worried about the passengers, i'm worried about those of us who have had to work with the planes.