Southwest Rapid Rewards - LAX-SFO Empty

Flying Flight 1900, LAX-SFO tonight. Delayed flight.

Gate Agent comes on to begin boarding and says,

"We are now ready to begin boarding Flight 1900 to San Francisco. Only 18 of you tonight. Over 100 open seats. All I ask is that if you need extra time or have a blue medical bracelet, you come up and board first. No? OK, once again, only 18 of you tonight. Open seating. Thank you for flying Southwest!" ^


My question... is this a sign that Virgin America's LAX-SFO supercheap flights are putting SW in any danger?

Sure seems like it. Then again, tonight's rain downpour and delayed departure could factor in too.

Not to mention, it is Tuesday night. Not exactly heavy load I imagine. But still interesting!

Wasn't there terrible weather in SFO today? Maybe people have gotten onto other flights?

My question... is this a sign that Virgin America's LAX-SFO supercheap flights are putting SW in any danger?

With 6 flights a day? Not likely. Most likely everyone got on earlier LAX-SFO flights or flew into SJC or OAK.

Most of my SFO flights this year have been packed to the gills.

I believe the messy weather up in the Bay Area did play a major part in the empty flight last night.

My friend was suppose to fly up to SFO but he end up flying in to OAK instead. He also saved over $100 in the car rental that he cancelled in SFO.

My question... is this a sign that Virgin America's LAX-SFO supercheap flights are putting SW in any danger?

Sure seems like it.As I mentioned yesterday in another thread (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/12624269-post425.html), WN's Revenue Passenger Miles were up 8.8% in September pushing load factors up over 11% while Revenues per Available Seat Mile were up about 3%, I don't think WN is "in any danger" right now.

LA-SF residents have been warned about the expected rain downpour for days.
LAX-SFO, SNA-SFO (and roundtrip) flights are almost full most of the time....
OAK-LAX, OAK-SNA (and roundtrip) fligths even worse ....

It seems like WN did cut some flights on the SFO-LAX/SNA route. I used to be able to get more flights at peak times (think 6pm on a Friday night) but oftentimes they only offer a 3:30pm and 7:40pm now.

I need to go to LA for business next week and it's easier to fly OAK-LAX due to the flights pretty much being hourly.

Also, as an aside, there are hardly any Bay Area-MDW direct flights anymore. I haven't flown this route lately but just booked a ticket yesterday and almost everything goes through DEN now.

I was able to get a SFO-MDW direct flight but the choices were fairly limited.

Did you book $29 fare for this flight?

For sure it was WX issues on Tuesday, as SFO arrival capacity is cut in half during rain, low ceiling, storms, etc. And Tuesday was a nasty storm day. In these cases, short haul west coast flights to SFO are the first to be held, delayed or cancelled.

My UA GEG-SFO flight was 5 hours late on Tuesday night. Fortunately, I hopped on the 5PM GEG-OAK fight and got home on time. BTW, great WN service except for the lazy gate area CS agent that reluctantly sold me a ticket, complaining twice that I should be buying this at the departures counter (outside security). :rolleyes:

IMhO a sample of one flight can give zero indication of how a carrier is doing on a specific route.

Too many outside factors to consider.... flight was priced too high, season, connecting flights, or the mysterious.... no one really needed to be in SFO this morning.

I haven't flown in|out of OAK since Southwest reopened SFO. My experience tracks that of the OP rather than tusphotog's. I offer many data points. But I don't fly there during commute hours.

I wonder, if the OP's and my data points are reliable, if it's due to two main factors. Business travel, at least intra-California, may be building back in, and OAK is more reliable. Not necessarily in that order.

It's interesting to juxtapose nsx's experience, mentioned in the stock thread, that the OAK-LAX run has been packed since the beginning of September. (I've inferred that he flies during the most intense commute hours, usually Monday and Friday.) While I maintain that SFO hasn't been. Reliability is important to business flyers -- and worth the extra 10 mile drive?

The reliability factor... The airports are a couple of crow miles apart; the two airports get - mostly - the same weather. But we know that fog's and rain's effect on SFO is to cut one runway and capacity by ~50%. While, for the most part, OAK keeps on pluggin', albeit staggered. With Southwest flying into both, maybe this gives the opportunity to see the result of a kind of experiment, and Customers, especially business customers, needing to decide ahead of time, are saying "to hell with the uncertainty," and choosing the East Bay.

Another 100% load on OAK-LAX this morning...

Another 100% load on OAK-LAX this morning...

OMG, 100% load on a Monday morning. :rolleyes:

OMG, 100% load on a Monday morning. :rolleyes:

It's notable because the loads on nsx's Monday morning commuter flights have been light for over a year.

OMG, 100% load on a Monday morning. :rolleyes:

You might think this would be entirely normal, but I haven't seen 100% loads intra-California in 4 years or more. Southwest had been flooding this market with capacity. For 18 months running my Monday morning flights had 40 to 50 passengers. Those were the days.

Now Southwest is cutting capacity and increasing demand with very low fares (relative to current fuel costs).

I had a 100% full SAN-SFO flight on Thursday. Two WN SAN-SFO flights left within 10 minutes, both flights were "totally full" according to the GA.

I was surprised though on my SJC-LAS flight. On a Friday afternoon, there were only 100 people on that flight.

As I mentioned yesterday in another thread (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/12624269-post425.html), WN's Revenue Passenger Miles were up 8.8% in September pushing load factors up over 11% while Revenues per Available Seat Mile were up about 3%, I don't think WN is "in any danger" right now.

WN seems to be doing fine as it has reduced flying along with much of the rest of the US industry (with exceptions like Allegiant). It has to feel better with a load factor of about 75% for Sept. '09, as compared to about 63% for Sept. '08 (of course, as a pax I'd prefer something like this flight's 18% load).

The distinction here is that WN's national results don't necessarily speak to its intra-California performance (Those numbers are on a Dept. of Transportation website somewhere...), thus may make it hard to find future empty flights.

FWIW, I've taken LAX-SFO/vv several times this year - all of them have been >90% full.