SWA wants to fly from HOU to MEX and SouthAmerica

[Double Shot]

Flop

I dont think I could take that as credit.

 

[PCL_128]

Uh, well, I'm not sober at the moment. But he's betting I won't be out of work if this gets' approved. Which means I get Bake's money when this deal torpedos my job, right? I've got to pay up if my employer doesn't go under... Idk....

Got it. I think I'm the one who needs to sober up.

 

[Flopgut]

Flop

I dont think I could take that as credit.

Well, that data is not easy to find...

 

[Bake]

Sober up and think about it FLOP. ( I don't know if i have ever said that to anyone before, it's usually said to me). Anyway, I don't want a bet we both can't keep.

Bake

 

[Flopgut]

That's too large an amount for me Bake....

 

[SWA Bubba]

BULL!
Very comparable... Southwest was crying about unfair competition. Competition is competition. It's rather comical that now that the playing field is leveled, and SW no longer has it's upper edge with fuel hedges, they're the ones crying the most.

I'm sorry Scoot, where exactly are we crying? When you guys wanted to do your slot swap, it was the Feds that said you had to divest X number of slots to avoid monopoly. You agreed to it. The problem was, Southwest (and other airlines, for that matter) were interested in the divested slots (which would then belong to the airports/FAA, by the way), but you wanted to cherry pick who got them instead. You wanted to limit your competition by actually choosing your own competitor; someone you felt would post the least actual competition to you. As I recall, it was YOU doing the crying to the FAA: "well, if we can't choose our own competitor, then we may not want to do this swap after all. So there."

I just don't get your complaint here at HOU. You fly (as a rule) into bigger airports that serve your model (hub and spoke, larger capacity aircraft). We fly (often) into middle sized airports, like MDW and HOU, because they fit OUR model. Your regional airlines fly into tiny airports (some of which I'm not even sure where they are), because that's THEIR model, with their smaller RJs. We don't fly into those places, because they're too small to justify our 737s, for the same reason you don't bring your 777s and such to places like ABQ, OKC and CRP (or MDW and HOU, for that matter). The airport size or market size doesn't justify it. You've got multiple sized airframes to serve different sized airports and markets (plus your regional RJs for really tiny airports/markets), but we don't. All of our aircraft are essentially the same size, so we stick with airports (and markets) that we can make work best for us. That's how a business plan works. Trying to force us to make our operation fit into your business plan is not fair or level at all. It's crap, and clearly Southwest isn't buying into it.

Fair and level means YOU fly any size aircraft you want into any airport you want (and can make money doing so), and we'll do the same. We just don't have the choice of aircraft sizes that you do. How about this: you fly your 777s from IAH to Europe, we'll fly our 737s from HOU to closer places like DAL or maybe even CUN, and you can have your regional guys fly their RJs from Baton Rouge to wherever-the-hell you fly to from Baton Rouge. (Actually, I don't really know what smaller markets your RJs serve; Baton Rouge was just the first small city with an airport that came to mind. But I think you get my point.)

Or you can just keep bitching. It probably won't help. Lawyers and Executives posture and orate extremes to get their way, but when it's all said and done, and it turns out that most of their grandstanding was just crap, and then we pilots just fly the planes to where they're told.

Bubba

 

[texman]

I can remember when expressed was doing all the Mexico flying, are the still doing that

 

[tzskipper]

I'm sorry Scoot, where exactly are we crying? When you guys wanted to do your slot swap, it was the Feds that said you had to divest X number of slots to avoid monopoly. You agreed to it. The problem was, Southwest (and other airlines, for that matter) were interested in the divested slots (which would then belong to the airports/FAA, by the way), but you wanted to cherry pick who got them instead. You wanted to limit your competition by actually choosing your own competitor; someone you felt would post the least actual competition to you. As I recall, it was YOU doing the crying to the FAA: "well, if we can't choose our own competitor, then we may not want to do this swap after all. So there."

I just don't get your complaint here at HOU. You fly (as a rule) into bigger airports that serve your model (hub and spoke, larger capacity aircraft). We fly (often) into middle sized airports, like MDW and HOU, because they fit OUR model. Your regional airlines fly into tiny airports (some of which I'm not even sure where they are), because that's THEIR model, with their smaller RJs. We don't fly into those places, because they're too small to justify our 737s, for the same reason you don't bring your 777s and such to places like ABQ, OKC and CRP (or MDW and HOU, for that matter). The airport size or market size doesn't justify it. You've got multiple sized airframes to serve different sized airports and markets (plus your regional RJs for really tiny airports/markets), but we don't. All of our aircraft are essentially the same size, so we stick with airports (and markets) that we can make work best for us. That's how a business plan works. Trying to force us to make our operation fit into your business plan is not fair or level at all. It's crap, and clearly Southwest isn't buying into it.

Fair and level means YOU fly any size aircraft you want into any airport you want (and can make money doing so), and we'll do the same. We just don't have the choice of aircraft sizes that you do. How about this: you fly your 777s from IAH to Europe, we'll fly our 737s from HOU to closer places like DAL or maybe even CUN, and you can have your regional guys fly their RJs from Baton Rouge to wherever-the-hell you fly to from Baton Rouge. (Actually, I don't really know what smaller markets your RJs serve; Baton Rouge was just the first small city with an airport that came to mind. But I think you get my point.)

Or you can just keep bitching. It probably won't help. Lawyers and Executives posture and orate extremes to get their way, but when it's all said and done, and it turns out that most of their grandstanding was just crap, and then we pilots just fly the planes to where they're told.

Bubba

It's ironic that SWA got their EWR slots from CAL (I think) as a result of the CAL/UA merger approval process. I don't recall those slots going back to the FAA for any sort of a re-allocation process. I guess there is truth to the saying that my ally is my enemies enemy... Just depends on the deal.

Like you say, "..we pilots just fly the planes to where they're told."

S

 

[Flopgut]

Very glad to get back on here and see I did not wager Bake 30 large.... Holy cow... When he said "a lot of money for a pilot" I thought he meant 2 or 3 hundred dollars...

 

[Bake]

Dam flop, I was going to buy a boat.