Hobby expansion passes; Southwest wins fight with United

[Double Shot]

Hey flop,


Tell me the story of cal light. How did that go down again? Who kicked whos butt? Tell me again the flight schedule that ran between cle and hou. Every thirty minutes you said. Your so full of crap.

Loser

 

[CA Calypso]

Flop,

You really need to step back and take a break my friend. You are so close to the issues that you can no longer see them clearly. Some of your posts are just not factual - they're all emotion driven.

 

[SKC]

In the relationship between CAL and the City of Houston, someone had to blink first. It was either CAL when they merged with UAL, or Houston when they approved SWA's terminal. Idk. But for now, it's spoiled. Maybe we can get it back on track. The cuts are very much tied to the windfall SWA was given. Period. Does not matter how far off it is. We have to cut our losses and go elsewhere.

You're right flop. I think that in 2023 Delta will expand their operations in SNA....SWA would be smart to cut our schedule now since it MAY happen later.

 

[Flopgut]

Hey flop,


Tell me the story of cal light. How did that go down again? Who kicked whos butt? Tell me again the flight schedule that ran between cle and hou. Every thirty minutes you said. Your so full of crap.

Loser

You're right flop. I think that in 2023 Delta will expand their operations in SNA....SWA would be smart to cut our schedule now since it MAY happen later.

You two are pretty good at mouthing off, and that's all.

SWA hits almost all airports in LA from all directions. If the SWA effect is real, then why didn't you not hit IAH from all directions? You guys keep talking about how LA and Houston are parallels. Sufficiently so that it factored into your argument that you derserved the terminal at Hobby. Bubba keeps making the point that if SWA had to go to IAH, your customers would have to drive from Hobby. Of course they would. If you guys wanted FIS at an LA airport, would you have one built at each airport? Or would someone at Burbank maybe have to drive somewhere? Or would the City maybe have to choose one central place for all the international traffic?

I think CAL lite went the same place al shuttle type operations did. They were bad ideas and were melded into the larger operation. It did have a lot to do with not being able to compete with SWA in that manner.

 

[vixin]

Give it a rest, get over it its done and get a life. How pathetic it must be to be you.:crying:

 

[FlyinGuy]

Understand that part of what SWA argued about not going to DFW all those years ago was that they never wanted to go there in the first place, that it was too expensive, delay prone, etc, etc. I'm pointing out that those same arguments seemed to surface recently about IAH, even though you had a station there at one point. Your argument changes to suit the airport you are trying to exploit.

Uh, so this "southwest effect" thingy, why didn't it work in IAH? I mean, it's suppose to be impervious to any legacy competition, right? Why are you citing the WA as some problem to your ongoing success at IAH? You could have left IAH and flown anywhere in the country. Point to point, is what you do, I thought. If we're suppose to belive all the stuff you claim you can do, why didn't you get it done at IAH?

Truth is, you weren't about to poke us with a stick, we would have got right after you at Hobby. We were a tough competitor you could not handle.

Why can't you get it through your head that SWA operated about 4-6 IAH -DAL flights per day. It was never going to be, nor was it intended to be a large operation for SWA. It was designed to capture a few of the north Houston folks that wanted to go to Dallas. It was deemed too expensive to continue that service and they wanted to put the planes on more profitable routes.

 

[FlyinGuy]

In the relationship between CAL and the City of Houston, someone had to blink first. It was either CAL when they merged with UAL, or Houston when they approved SWA's terminal. Idk. But for now, it's spoiled. Maybe we can get it back on track. The cuts are very much tied to the windfall SWA was given. Period. Does not matter how far off it is. We have to cut our losses and go elsewhere.

So what you are saying is that SWA has not even turned a wheel yet and you are starting to retreat to higher ground!!! Now that is what I would call the "Southwest Effect"!!!

 

[redflyer65]

Southwest Effect on steriods I guess. Maybe we should announce other possible plans and just shut UCal down completely. All with rumor of course.

 

[bluesideup1]

Flop,

I don't think I have ever seen anyone that is so delusional as you and this is coming from someone that has been on flight info long before they started charging for it.

To think that the Houston city government would limit competition based on past history and close ties is nothing short of cronyism and would border on corruption.

Something that would be common place in Chicago but even there the city government didn't try to limit Southwest through back channels and regulation. They allowed Southwest and numerous other airlines to operate both domestic and international out of Midway without almighty United signing off on it.

To think this would have turned out any different than it did would be incredibly naive. How would the city council explain their decision to discriminate against Southwest to the court from the lawsuit that would have followed. When Southwest offered to pay for a customs building that would bring more destinations and lower fares to the Houston metroplex let alone trying to explain that to the people of Houston that vote them into office.

 

[humveedriver]

Because of the costs and resources involved, I think the City could have gone either way with the decision and been fine in court. I think each city has a right to determine what's best for the city and citizens. Just because Chicago does it one way doesn't mean it necessarily would work for Houston. I think it made sense because Houston is a big, spread out city with challenging cross town traffic. In the end I think there will be enough business for both airports. The SWA model doesn't take away from UAL's top tier customers who want a full service airline. UAL is losing those customers on their own.

 

[CaptJax]

UA Blames WN - Earns Cranky Jackass Award

United Blames Southwest, City of Houston for Its Own Problems in Houston, Earns the Cranky Jackass Award
June 4,

When United decided to fight Southwest’s effort to get international facilities at Houston’s Hobby airport, I didn’t blame the airline. After all, wouldn’t you want to fight anything that had the potential to hurt your business even a little? But now that the decision has been made to move forward, United has embarrassed itself thoroughly. What the airline has done is try to blame Southwest and the city of Houston for massive cuts that probably were going to happen anyway. This unprofessional behavior is akin to a three year old having a tantrum for not getting his way. For this, United, you most certainly deserve a Cranky Jackass award.

As I wrote a couple weeks ago, the original fight had been over the right to have international flights go in and out of Hobby airport, on the south side of the city. Southwest has been driving this as it finally ramps up to start a push into near-international markets. United said it would mean gloom and doom for its flights at Intercontinental because Southwest flying internationally would ruin its business forever. The end result would be 10 percent less capacity and 1,300 fewer jobs.

This seemed like posturing designed to pressure the city to walk away from the project, but the odds were against United from the start. And when Southwest agreed to pay for the required facility itself, there was no way this wasn’t going to happen. I figured that the hollow threats from United would just disappear. I guess I was wrong.

In a lengthy employee bulletin, United outlined what is now going to happen since the facility has been approved.

“We expect to begin a 10 percent reduction in planned IAH capacity beginning with the fall 2012 schedule change … including not flying our previously announced service from IAH to Auckland, New Zealand”
“… we will be forced to reduce employment at IAH as a direct result of the Mayor’s and Council’s action.”
“… this decision puts the need for the remaining $600 million investment [into Terminal B's redevelopment] in significant doubt.”
Could United get any whinier? The reality here is that these are things United probably needed to do anyway. But it was in the middle of a political game and it figured that it had found a way to deflect the fallout. Blame this minor blip of an international facility issue and then it could walk away acting like it was the good guy in all of this. The problem is that this scenario is so implausible that nobody is going to believe it.

Keep in mind that Southwest doesn’t anticipate starting international service until 2015 from Hobby, and we really don’t know exactly where the airline will go, but it will be short haul. If the impact was known in advance, then I would expect to see reductions like this. We see that when airports build expensive new terminals. The extra cost won’t come down the line for a few years in those cases, but it’s a definite cost and the airline decides to operate assuming that cost going forward.

But this is very different. United has no idea where Southwest will operate three years from now, and it doesn’t know the impact. All it can rely on is the questionable results of a study showing how terrible it’s going to be. That is not something that’s actionable. It’s just a random guess. (And it should be noted there are two different studies with insanely opposite conclusions.)

So for United to make any moves now based on what may or may not happen in three years is just silly. Instead, what we see here is United trying to find a way to make changes it wants to make without looking like a bad guy.

787 Lost
Two years ago, Continental announced it would launch 787 flights from Houston to Auckland. This was an exciting prospect that was without question meant to drum up support for the merger with United that it was working on at the time. It used the 787 route to show that the merger would help create enough traffic that it could grow into great new routes like these. Whether this was ever an actual plan or not remains to be seen, but it’s clear the route had fallen out of favor with United as it announced Denver to Tokyo would be the first route for the 787. That’s decidedly less sexy since it doesn’t add a new city to the network – just connects two dots that weren’t connected nonstop before.

So instead of saying, “you know, this route isn’t going to work as well as we thought,” United is blaming the Hobby international issue for its demise. Oh please. According to United, the airline is going to be forced to cut a bunch of service domestically and elsewhere, and that means there won’t be enough connections generated to support the Auckland flight anymore.

Overdue Broader Cuts
The same rationale is given for other routes both international and domestic. The threat of Southwest is going to cause a 10 percent reduction in flights? That’s what United wants us to believe. It says that the prospect of future growth was going to turn currently unprofitable flights profitable. Now those hopes of growth are dashed so the routes will be cut. Were I an investor in United, I would be livid. Why the heck would the airline continue to operate unprofitable routes today simply because it thought the flights would eventually be profitable in the future? It’s not like these are slots that it gives up if it stops flying. More importantly, if 10 percent of the operation is living on that prayer, then United is mis-managing its network.

And that leads me to a point of clarification. I have no problem with United making these changes. It sounds like they’re overdue to me. But I have a problem with United trying to blame Southwest and, more importantly, the City of Houston. United already angered the city by moving the corporate headquarters up to Chicago, but this has to be the last straw. I can’t imagine the city wanting to go out of its way to help United at all if this is the thanks it gets for trying to do what’s right for the people of Houston.

This really is a sorry effort by United. The airline’s leadership should act like adults and explain the real reasons that these changes need to be made.