which reality is that? the "we're senior and we're captains already so we're going to defenestrate the lances and stick a bunch of seniority into open time that doesn't presently exist" that kind of reality?
In the end the consumer determines what price a seat will sell for, without sales you don't fill the seats. My wife was a frequent user of SWA, used them all the time. When the TA failed in the spring, the one way DTW-ABQ doubled for advance purchases. I mean six months in advance, went from $99 to $199. She could find cheaper fares at AAL, NWA, Frontier, and CAL. Within two weeks the fares were down to $159, then two weeks later down to $129, now they are down to $99 again. It looks like SWA tried to raise fares and saw significant drop in booking to fill those otherwise empty seats on those Tue, Wed and Sat flights.
I agree completely. The seniority centricness of the failed TA wasn't put there by management. Management doesn't care who gets first shot at open time or whether or not there is a right of return for displaced pilots (TA still didn't have this basic concept, almost every other airline has some type of right of return if you get displaced out of a base/seat, SWA has nothing) Our union thought, incorrectly, that they could 'sweeten the pot' for the senior captains.
There may be connection, but I am only guessing, the big fare jump came at the same time. Wasn't it about the same time there was talk of charging for extra bags and changing tickets. Was the company looking for more revenue? I only know about that particular city pair, because my wife shops it for deals all the time. But I also know SWA lost 3 RT's DTW-ABQ during the last three months because of being above the competition during that time frame.
