Southwest has built a great little business for itself, but it's not the type of business that can be ratcheted up to go from serving about 50 cities to hundreds of cities worldwide. They selected the cities and markets that are the most profitable for them to serve, which is why they're sucessful.

At the same time, they provide little in the way of service/perks. Is that the way people really want to travel in the future? We were getting to a point where travel was slowly getting better and better for the customers. Is it realistic to go to a WN model of all coach, no food, no frills? Are frequent business travelers really going to want to fly 100,000 miles a year like that?

WN's no frills may be acceptable on the short hops they fly, but who is going to fly from LHR or CDG to NYC in an all-coach, no-frills setup? That would just further turn people off to air travel - both business and leisure.

Airlines need to better manage their money, employees, costs, etc. But, it's still a service industry, and if you downgrade the service, you reduce the price you can charge and the number of customers. WN's model is not a magic bullet for major airlines trying to provide worldwide service.

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