<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by LGA:
I think there's much more to WN's long-term success than this: friendly people; a simple frequent-flyer program (which is also generous if you take even just a few trips per year); and cheap fares. (I'm sure there are more, but those seem the most obvious.)
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Don't forget that they don't simply have low fares, they also have low costs! WN employees are heavily unionized, but their labor contracts have industry leading productivity, combined wages and benefits near the top of the scale.
Southwest has lower distribution costs, but they acheive it in a different way. They don't participate in the major TA computer systems like Sabre, Worldspan, etc. If my TA is booking a WN ticket for me, he looks up the flights on the website, then calls and books the ticket as ticketless travel. There's no 3rd party IT vendor to add costs....