SWA makin' money?

[Noam]

The last several months I've noticed that Southwest (SWA) consitently has the lowest load factors in the industry. I think their average is 62%, while ATA and AirTran are just above with 66%.

My question is this: How does Southwest make profits with such low load factors? No major or LCC comes close to having such low load factors.

Noam

 

[vc10]

Load factors and yield (revenue per passenger-mile) or average fares are incomplete and potentially misleading metrics.

100% load factor sounds great, until you discover that passengers are paying $1 per seat. Likewise, an average fare of $400 sounds wonderful, until you discover that there are only three passengers on the airplane.

Focus on RASM---revenue per available seat mile. It doesn't matter whether an airline chooses to price high and have lower load factors or price low and have higher load factors. All that matters is how good are they are producing revenue from the seats available.

 

[Slug]

CASM

you also have to look at Cost per Available Seat Mile. Ours are pretty low (good).

As an aside, I flew Sat-Mon. Average load was about 125 out of 137. Today (monday) - 2 legs 135 and 137. business was good this weekend.

 

[LearLove]

I think bizz was good everywhere this past weekend. I did a 4 day (Thur to Sun) with 4 legs per day and didn't have one leg with less than 30 pax on a 37 seat plane.

 

[pa56pa]

Hmmm...

I don't know about that... I flew revenue on ATA Friday night thinkin my flight from EWR to SFO would be packed.... B737-800 had probably 50 or so pax onboard.....

I was glad to occupy the whole row.. lol

JR

 

[Midnight Mike]

Well, according to that show on the A&E chanell called, Airliners, it seems as if every Southwest is oversold.

 

[pa56pa]

If its out of LAX and MDW.. most definitely.... but that's nothin new...

 

[SWA/FO]

Loads are good... were good on my last 4 day trip