US Airways Dividend Miles (Pre-FlightFund Merger) - Southwest expands @ PHL

Effective July 9, Southwest will add the following flights at PHL:

4 daily to RDU
4 daily to MHT
1 daily to FLL
1 daily to HOU
1 daily to LAX
1 daily to MSY
1 daily to PBI
1 additional to TPA (total of 2)

Walkup fares will be $49 to MHT and RDU, with $29 advance purchase fares. FLL and PBI will be $129/$79.

Greg

The RDU and LAX are killer for LUV. MHT is a nice addition (I'd think Tom B. probably thinks so, anyway).

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Don't feed the trolls.

yeah the RDU flight is huge...lots of philly to RTP traffic...

Incredible timing here by WN. DS said they were trying to kill US? Wrong, the timing indicated that they are trying bury them alive.


[This message has been edited by DrivingRain (edited Mar 25, 2004).]

US has been RAPING me on RDU trips (without advance purchase $800-$1000RT).....for that price I might drive to PHL to take SW.

The US ship is certainly taking in water....... how fast can they bail?

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by GregL:
Effective July 9, Southwest will add the following flights at PHL:

4 daily to RDU
4 daily to MHT
1 daily to FLL
1 daily to HOU
1 daily to LAX
1 daily to MSY
1 daily to PBI
1 additional to TPA (total of 2)

Walkup fares will be $49 to MHT and RDU, with $29 advance purchase fares. FLL and PBI will be $129/$79.

Greg</font>

I suspect that this is only the beginning. Those frequencies will no doubt increase. I could easily see them adding OAK service to compete for the Bay Area market.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by ClueByFour:
The RDU and LAX are killer for LUV. MHT is a nice addition (I'd think Tom B. probably thinks so, anyway).</font>

Yeah, I like that one all right http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

These additions just underline the fact that WN has a lot more focus on "business travel" than they are typically credited with in the shallow analysis that is so often cited.

$49 dollar walk-ups are killer fares in the northeast. US can't match that long-term -- it's $0.06/mile. If their idea of matching it is to run RJs 3x a day they're doomed.

If, OTOH, they rationalize fares and focus on providing real value with the business friendly product features like upgrades, the club, the route network and laptop power on the planes then they can keep me and I'll happily pay something more than $49 but less than the $700+ that they're currently trying to extract from that route... Let LUV have the $49 fares -- no need to match that if they provide a better product.