Originally Posted by
xenole
Got my first flight from LAS-LAX tonight with Southwest (BS A2 apparently)and have been reading through a few threads regarding boarding, seats etc and have noticed quite a few people referring to WN. Why?
As others have mentioned, "WN" is Southwest's 2-letter code.
Originally, our 2-letter code was "OE", but it was changed back in the late 1970s. The obvious desired choice "SW" was already in use by another airline, so according to longer-tenure folks (now retired) that I know, we looked for something that had a "W" in it, and "WN" was what what best fit the bill. The "WN" code has zero to do with the "Nuts!" book about Southwest, since the code changeover pre-dates the 1998 book by 15-20 years.
"SW" still shows up as the aircraft registration number suffix on many of our aircraft, but given that it's not always available for the numbers that we have desired (Skywest uses the "SW" suffix on some of
their aircraft), we also have many aircraft that use "WN" suffix in the registration number.