SWA's Performance in Denver....Or lack of.

[maxblast72]

With no fuel hedge advantage, Southwest has a 10% cost disadvantage to carriers like Frontier, Jetblue, and Airtran. It was easy for Southwest to pull traffic off of the legacies 10 years ago with their huge cost advantage as Southwest had 90% of the LCC market as Airtran and Jetblue were just starting to grow. In todays market, Southwest is facing other strong LCCs everywhere they look as well as legacy carriers that have cut cost dramatically in bankruptcy.

Be interesting to see how Southwest adapts to the new market. Their first step is to try to reduce competition by buying a bankrupt competitor in DEN.

 

[rajflyboy]

What do you expect of the people from Boulder Colorado?

They don't want to be herded like Cattle Either!

 

[The Victors]

With no fuel hedge advantage, Southwest has a 10% cost disadvantage to carriers like Frontier, Jetblue, and Airtran. It was easy for Southwest to pull traffic off of the legacies 10 years ago with their huge cost advantage as Southwest had 90% of the LCC market as Airtran and Jetblue were just starting to grow. In todays market, Southwest is facing other strong LCCs everywhere they look as well as legacy carriers that have cut cost dramatically in bankruptcy.

Be interesting to see how Southwest adapts to the new market. Their first step is to try to reduce competition by buying a bankrupt competitor in DEN.

The only cost advantage is labor costs. You swa haters are not smart. Swa operational costs are still the lowest in the industry. If the employees at swa decided to take a pay cut down to the new low being set by the legacies and other LCC's, I think you MIGHT see a significant difference. When the legacies and other LCC's get some balls and get a contract "close to" swa wages, then you can start talking about costs.

 

[The Victors]

not to mention the hundreds of pilots that swa could have furloughed, but is choosing not too. How many of you haters can say that about your "airline"?

 

[firstthird]

SWA is competing against a bankrupt carrier in DEN and one that is recently out of bankruptcy that hasn't recovered their wages. We usually take time and money to build up a market.

I don't doubt that we are losing money. But, it seems sort of silly to take pride in the fact that it takes abrogation of contracts and pay cuts and stopping 401K matches to compete.

I don't think we're better than anyone else. I think the economy sucks. We're still paying for over a billion in bad hedges that management made last summer. we took the good hedges, now we're paying for the bad hedges. that is life.

 

[NuGuy]

not to mention the hundreds of pilots that swa could have furloughed, but is choosing not too. How many of you haters can say that about your "airline"?

Oh, I don't know, about 12,500...

Nu

 

[The Victors]

Sorry my post was a little "over excited", but it's silly and frustrating at the same time to read posts from these guys exclaiming how low their airline's costs are NOW. After bankruptcy's and wage and benefits cuts, everyone is ready to compete with swa. (Does anyone realize that if swa pilots made F9 wages it would mean hundreds of millions of dollars annually for swa?) Pilots excited about cost reductions and NOW being able to compete with swa seem to forget that it's on their backs. These are the reasons why the profession of being an airline pilot is full speed to the bottom.

 

[Scope out RJ's]

Sorry my post was a little "over excited", but it's silly and frustrating at the same time to read posts from these guys exclaiming how low their airline's costs are NOW. After bankruptcy's and wage and benefits cuts, everyone is ready to compete with swa. (Does anyone realize that if swa pilots made F9 wages it would mean hundreds of millions of dollars annually for swa?) Pilots excited about cost reductions and NOW being able to compete with swa seem to forget that it's on their backs. These are the reasons why the profession of being an airline pilot is full speed to the bottom.

Look no further than the mirror! 10 Years ago, WN was paying F9 type wages!

 

[firstthird]

Southwest wages have been more or less stagnant when you account for inflation for a very long time.

 

[The Victors]

Well I wasn't working for nor applying to SWA 10 years ago. So I didn't have a say in their contract like I would today.