My 2 cents after reading the article….. SWAVictor


what has hurt them over the last 5-10 years….

1. They limited stop over/ connections which limited services between certain parts of the country leaving only a couple of options and higher prices.

2. they dropped many short haul flights to some hub cities with more routing options to smaller secondary hubs with less routing creating higher fare/ schedule inconvenience

3. During Covid they limited bookings significantly which thrn made it difficult to fly longer XC routes between secondary airports.

4. In Covid they also dropped their signature rogue flights that went between non hub cities

5. the mistake of going to Denver to create a major hub which can have weather delays. I think doing one out of KC would have been the smarter move, especially with KC building a new airport. Right now Denver is a hub for frontier and united This would also allow them todo more connections that are a bit more reasonable. I’ve seen some instance connections through denver posted

6. Assigned seating , or lack there of, has been an issue for years with folks saving seats and the “ miracle” flights to beat the seat assignments. It is a problem for customers out of the hub cities where they are doubly screwed by both higher fares and crappier boarding if they done have status. One time after Covid my brother and his family flew back to our hometown thru bwi. I live near bwi so I booked on same flight as their connection. They were A and I was in C. They saved me a seat where they each sat window/ Aisle in neighboring rows so when I came I got a seat in their rows. Another scenario is when connection is delayed, what pre boarding you paid for goes to waste with a delay.

7. sone of your routing creates over 4 hr layovers. This screams at inefficiencies in flight routing design.

8. scheduling delays due to how flight network is structured. This is where the airline needs to change to more hub-spoke routing with extra planes at hubs to then have more on time arrivals without the cascading delays

9. problem with hawaii is that because you have only 737s you can only fly to/ from west coast which limited route booking options. Part of the problem was not having true red eye flights (leave Hawaii after 9 pm and connect early am in oak, phx, lAs, etc. other options would have been to allow overnights in one booking like a west coast to say Dallas/ nashville arriving 10 pm then booking a 8 am next day flight in one ticket. Alaska does this in its scheduling

10. rebooking post weather disaster is common with all airlines, but really bad with southwest

11. expanding on Hawaii and DCA, LGS and other restricted locations you should have booking rules that are different for these cities or limited service markets like city A only flys to two hub cities where they connect for other places

some good things…

1. WN is still the leader in driving airfare early in the booking window. It usually takes WN promotions to trigger fare cuts. Their pricing model jumps up when you go under 21, under 14, and under 7 days

2. being a bit different is a good thing. Don’t try to be like other airlines in how status and fare class is done