I finally found where I read Southwest was the 5th largest carrier! It was in the press release when they announced Albany!

"Southwest Airlines, the nation�s fourth largest carrier in terms of Customer boardings, serves 55 cities in 29 states�this will increase to 56 cities in 29 states when Southwest begins service to Albany International Airport. The airline currently has more than 29,000 Employees and operates more than 2,500 flights a day. "

I wonder who's in front and who's behind.

http://www.twa.com/pressrelease/docu...iReleaseID=625

I understand that Southwest is just about always first in ontime flights. That it is first in passenger boarding for relatively short flights does not make it the fourth (or fifth) largest US airline.

However,What I am questioning is the general assumption ( certainly indicated by the title of this topic !) that the failure to list Southwest as first is some kind of Northwest plot or even peculiar to Northwest.Doc's link just posted demonstrates that at least one other airline( TWA) is following the same listing without Southwest. I have never seen any airline list Southwest in "first" for ontime performance. In a recent ad, Northwest once more published this list - sans Southwest- even though TWA appeared in first place.

I wonder why Northwest is promoting this ?

After all, if my experience is anything to go by, the airlines are all that serious about being on-time.

For example, on a recent Alaska flight (of only 1 hour duration), we sat on the runway for 45 minutes while cargo was loaded !! No air, no drinks, no apologies.

If the airlines were really serious they would give us frequent flier miles for the time we wait. How about 500 miles for every hour (or 50% of flight time) that they are late ? Then we might see some improvement.

It's a shame that the so called "majors" ignore Southwest. I think that SW scare's the hell out of the big boys.

Slowly but surely, they're adding longer haul flights. They're profitable and any city they go into they immediately drive down the fares. For short hauls, they can't be beat. US used to charge $600 full fare on a vintage 1970 prop plane for the 300 mile trip from BWI to ALB. SW's full fare will be under $150, and you get jet service, too! (See also, PVD, MHT, HFD, etc.)

I guess they figure if they ignore the enemy, they'll go away.

Touting "international" makes this claims even more ludicrous, because international flights are actually excluded from the on-time performance stats.