Originally Posted by
Flo's Restaurant
Southwest doesn't play the merge-and-destroy game that you're suggesting (that's AA's speciality). Even with ATA, they basically just bought the gates at MDW and their LGA slots; everything else is gone.
Well, if you want to argue that WN's "corporate ethics" are better than others, I wouldn't mention ATA. WN bought their Midway assets to prevent them from falling into another airlines hands (either AirTran or America West). What they left was a shell of a company that almost everyone believed would eventually go under (and everybody was right!).
America West intended to take the gates AND the employees. Had AW not been outbid, all of those employees would still have good major airline jobs today. And consumers would probably enjoy more choices in the Chicago market.
Which isn't to say that WN was wrong to do what they did -- from a business standpoint, I think it was one of their smarter moves in the past decade -- just that it was far from saintly.