lowecur
Well-known member
- Joined
- Sep 14, 2003
- Posts
- 2,317
It concerns me!SWAPoolie said:Chase,
Does the second lowest LF in the industry concern you? I'm starting class soon and will learn alot of the SW way but this hard number made my eyes pop. How can this be?
SWA is a highly flexible, financially stable, well oiled machine. Their achilles heal is the rest of the LCC's are growing quicker than they are and the LCC's are "trending" higher load factors and are making money or they are close to it. If this trend continues as I suspect, then this is reason for mgt to be concerned. As the next few years go by, SWA will be dealing with a very formative coalition of airlines that will be overlapping many of their routes with head to head competition.
The legacy's will no doubt downsize through forced consolidation and liquidation in the next few years. This will benefit SWA as they have the reserve capacity to fill in where it's needed at will. It will also mean that they will continue down a path of changing the business model to accomodate many new cities that are expensive to operate and not designed for fast turn-a-round/high frequency. Will the newly evolving Legacy's be able to compete? Lot's depends on how the pension and scope issues play out, but I suspect they will over time.
I don't count out SWA for one minute, but the cake walk is over.
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