I appreciate that you're trying to see my point. I think the agreement that exists is that all international flying in Houston take place out of IAH. The city council has to approve Hobby being re-instated as an international airport.
I think the chance that CAL/UAL prevails is about 1 in 3. If we don't, I think/hope we will go to Hobby to offer competing flights. (notice Smisek says 1300 workers will be "displaced"? I think that is about the number we would have to use to fly out of Hobby. I think he's signalling to GK that we'll be coming) Here is the call I'm making, and I know it might sound crazy: I don't think the city is going to let us go to Hobby. The deal GK ultimately wants is no/little competition. He wants CAL/UAL to go the way of Braniff, so he's cleverly playing things out just as was done at Love Field...
Flop,
I'm trying to see your point as well, and to a point, I can. However, I think your fears (or your company's stated fears, anyway) are
way overblown, and I suspect for dramatic effect. Supposing SWA's international HOU operations gets approved. How much harm do you
truly think will occur to CAL/UAL? I don't mean the doom and gloom, "we're gonna' die" stuff that the company's lawyers have to put out in their argument briefs. I mean real harm. What say you?
My personal suspicion is none. None, other than matching fares on the few competing, near-international that can be done from HOU with our type of aircraft. And I believe that lowering fares, even slightly, will spur more people to fly to those destinations, which will ultimately result in more passengers and profit for ALL of the airlines. The reason I say this, is because this has been what's
always happened in these situations before.
As other posters have mentioned, you fly huge widebodies from IAH all over the world (remember, "Intercontinental" not just "international"), whereas we can only fly so many people in 20-30 international 737 departures per day (we only have something like 150 total HOU departures per day). Trust me, that's not going to destroy any other airline or Houston Intercontinental.
As far as your "level playing field" argument, all I have to say is that's a pretty subjective term in an industry as complicated as ours. You think "level" means we should fly out of IAH. That means split our operation (and that would be a significant operational split, in relative terms comparing our total Houston size to yours), and run operations on YOUR home turf. At YOUR airport, run the way your airline runs (hub and spoke, more time loading huge aircraft, significantly more ground time). Well, that doesn't work for us, with our business model and our size aircraft.
On the other hand, OUR idea of "level," is that you're welcome to run international operations at HOU with us. You'd only be able to use smaller planes to nearer destinations (limited by HOU's runways) like we plan on doing, however. You want to do that? You can do that as well as your large, intercontinental operations out of the only Houston airport capable of supporting that, your home, IAH. Or not. Your choice. To me, "level" and "fair competition" means, you run your business your way, and to your established model, and we run ours our way, and to our model. You don't force us to do things your way, and we don't force you to do things our way. Then we see whose product the consumer picks. It seems to me that experience shows that there's plenty of consumers to go around for each of our models.
Despite your insinuation, Southwest has NEVER worked to stop any airline from using any airport that we use, even "our" Love Field. The original agreement between the legacies and DFW did at first (not us), but now anyone can fly out of Love. Other airlines have come and gone (and some are still here), but that is up to them, and their business plans. And if you're truly worried about monopolies, consider this: American Airlines flies about 90% of the airtraffic into and out of the Dallas metroplex, and that's the DFW and Love
combined. That kind of gives your concerns about Southwest's DAL "monopoly" some new perspective, doesn't it? I suspect you'd come up with some similar "monopoly" numbers in Houston, combining IAH and HOU operations.
Our proposal is to spend OUR money to build this international terminal, which will bring more money (and travel opportunity) to the city. That's why they seem to like it. I don't think it won't hurt UAL/CAL at all, other than perhaps to put initial price pressure on the small number of competing routes. And then, increased passenger numbers will be pay off for all. It is, in NO way, shape or form, an attempt by GK to "kill" CAL/UAL and then takeover all of Houston, like you insinuate, and actually claim we did in Dallas (I suppose somebody forgot to tell AA that we killed them years ago; there's still a buttload of those silver airplanes in Dallas!). Can't happen.
In reality, I think you have nothing to worry about. I'm not going to tell you to "stop crying" or "have a beer," but *I* believe that what you're arguing on this thread is the same overblown histrionics that lawyers are paid to argue. You know what I mean? I believe that in a few years, people are going to wonder what the big fuss was even about. More people will get to travel south, and both airlines will be fine.
Just my two centavos.
Bubba
