<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by TravelManKen:
Market Cap in Billions as of March 1, 2002
United - UAL - 0.745
American AMR - 4.21
Delta - DAL - 4.46
Continental - CAL - 2.08
America West - AWA - 0.131
Northwest - NWAC - 1.45
US Airways - U - 0.368
Alaska Air - ALK - 0.852
Southwest - LUV - $15.95
I'm no financial analyst, but I'll go out on a limb and say that if Southwest is the only airline in this group making money AND has a market cap larger than the other 8 "majors" conbined - they are a major airline.</font>
Actually, I would say "major" reflects number of destinations served, and in this area WN is sorely lacking. WN is a "major" if you go by revenue because they have a lot of service to many of their destinations, but when you consider their route structure, there are major gaps. Same could be said of US in the West (though they had plans to fix some of that by adding PDX and SAN, two of the larger cities they don't currently serve).