North Dallas Chamber: Wright is Wrong

[ivauir]

Chase et al.

If Wright is repealed, do you see growth for SWA, or just reallocation?

JJ

We're going to grow with or without it. Doing away with it means DAL will be part of that growth.
DAL becomes more of a pain for us everyday, we can't do long haul out of there, getting to training is a pain in the AA , we all have plenty of extra airplane swaps because we have to balance the schediules among the domicilies ...blah blah blah blah whine whine you get the picture. Wright will not make or break this company, but if it goes away it will be a definate positive for growth.

 

[chase]

We currently serve 11 cities out of DAL...around 117 flights I believe at last count. PHX services N/S 30 or more cities I would suspect when the WA is lifted it will be done over a period of 2-4 years....announcements will be made by the airport folks about a new terminal & the 32 gates will be the max for sometime.

Considering the location of Dallas to our major cities in the system I would suspect easily an increase of flight totals up near 200 over this period of time or less (probably less). At one time I thought the outlying cities like LBB, AMA or MAF would see a reduction in flights & those would be moved to DAL....I'm no longer of that opinion. I would expect to see our western flights to remain the same but would expect to see more flights out of these west TX cities to DAL...DAL will be the hub for these folks to fly North & East, similar to what DFW is for the AA folks...that was the only options for those travelers who wanted to east/south or else they had to fly to ABQ & then head east/south/north. Eagle flights would be the primary competitor & when SWA competes against regional jets we generally do pretty well on CASM.

DAL would go from the smallest pilot base to at least something that would approach at least a 1/3rd larger IMHO. For now we'll have to wait & see...hopefully it will come to pass before too long.

I would differ only slightly with the thought that earnings wouldn't be significantly impacted by the WA going away. Efficiencies would be greatly improved since fewer aircraft swaps would have to occur...this always impacts on-time rates as it exposes the company to delays. Money savings on paying folks to come to training as pointed out would be a fair amount too. However, the greatest gain obviously would be the increase in revenues from seat offerings when compared to other carriers. It seems I've read that some of the gains could be in the $200-500M range...I'd go with the lower number but even if it was that, that would nearly increase annual revenues by 25% at that rate...not bad.