My point was that WN doing what they do is making a profit for themselves and hurting the economy in the process.

Unfortunately that's not how i did my reasearch, if only did samples of specific routes, so i can't tell you which route is the most profitable for WN, but what i found was unlike legacy airlines, WN's revenue and costs were quite highly correlated, which might suggest that the most profitable routes for WN are ones that they have the most flights on.

Your argument is rather armchair/acedemic. When you say WN is destroying air travel, some in Economics might refer to this as "creative destruction".

From a real-world perspective, I've been flying for the last 30 years and I've witnessed firsthand entry of WN into a fortress hub market. I am speaking about when Southwest entered into BWI approx 20- 25 years ago. BWI was at the time a USairways fortress hub.

From a US perspective BWI at the time was glorious; 25-35 stations stacked side by side to greet customers, a whole pier almost in entirety devote to US. Reminds me of NW today at MSP ;)

Over time US collapsed at BWI; US could not withstand WN competition. It was a strange situation, many gates were vacant ( a ghost terminal) for years. Today Usairways has a small presence at BWI, WN has its own flashy pier! It depends I suppose which side one is on - competition was terrible, ugly, and painful for USairways, great for WN.

Is the marketplace pretty? - no. Can it be transformative? yes. What will happen at MSP? - I don't have a crystal ball but I'd be willing to say MSP will change and the change will be good for the traveling public.

MSP is a fat monopoly cow and has been a fat cash cow for NW. Econ 101 says that monoply revenue will lure other competitors to market. Glad to see some competition in the MSP market.

Now that NW is no longer a Minnesotta company maybe MAC will encourage more competition

Good heavens. It's thread #42 for "Why is BBB-CCC more expensive then AAA-BBB-CCC, and BBB-CCC is the same flight?!".

Because they can!

;) ;) ;)

Humor me and tell me what your data source and methodology were. I'd really like to know. How did you determine revenues? Costs? For connecting fares, how did you allocate fares across the connections?

My point is you can not be selective about costs of service. You taking upgrades at considerably less cost than the actual ticket price has the same micro effect on the economy as Joe Traveler taking a "Ding" fare on Southwest. Both of you are taking a service at below market prices. You are just getting a nicer seat.

if only did samples of specific routes, so i can't tell you which route is the most profitable for WN, but what i found was unlike legacy airlines, WN's revenue and costs were quite highly correlated, which might suggest that the most profitable routes for WN are ones that they have the most flights on.[/

What routes did you study? How did you allocate revenue for connecting traffic? How did you formulate the cost? Curious.

than i suppose you should also rember from Econ 3361 "Advance Microeconomics" how a oligopolistic market can sometimes be more effienct than perfect competition when there's a continuting decrease in marginal costs when quantity increases and when there's a significant need for product differentiation.

I know people always think economic models have nothing to do with real life, but the thing is, there's no way for us to acutrally measure what would have happened if WN and other LCC never existed, so all we can do is build economic models. It might sound unreliable, but its the best we've got.

I simply use the GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) that most airlines use to allocate costs, with variable costs per flight plus the allocated fixed and/or step costs allocated according to a weighted average of number of passengers on a given plane and the plane type. The exact calcuations i got from the airlines directly, which unfuntunately i agreed not to display publicly. I'll give you a link, if my paper ever gets published (but i don't really have high hopes).

Fair enough.