PAX62

Not official sources but the rumblings that I have heard is that they are holding off on Hawaii for two reasons:

First is that the other carriers are trying to keep SW out by keeping the fares to the islands low as to not make it financially viable for another carrier to start a route.

Second is that WN knows that as soon as they launch the service, a LARGE amount of points holders and CP holders will be using their perks for that route taking up a larger percentage of seats vs paid fares than any other route...that on top of the artificially low fares maintained by the other carriers makes the WN to Hawaii route not a profitable endevour out of the gate.

Wingrider

I'm sorry if I mis-spotted the aircraft as a -700. I made the assumption it was a -700 as it didn't have the double wiglets (upper/lower). I thought all the -800s had those and stopped really giving the plane a once over. I guess I should have looked for the double doors over the wing.

I can absolutely say the numbers I saw were correct and it had ETOPS on it as I always look for that and compared tail number to nose wheel door numbers. strange I saw C vs Q. I paid attention to the letters because they were not on the nose wheel and I was looking for AS or SW. I couldn't figure out off the top of my head who C was. Anyway, of course it had SWA livery (current, not the new new)

Wingrider

I have CP and got their card just to burn off points for gift cards to keep my points down. I dropped to 600k in Jan, 900k now, and will be back over 1m by the end of the year. No CP allowed and 80k points O/W to HNL- Ok when can I book?

AMLFlyer

Keep in mind, Southwest has all coach configuration whereas UAL, AAL, AS, VX all have first class sections. This allows for several thousand pound difference on a full flight payload wise. When flying to Hawaii, there are different fuel rules than flying lower 48 domestic. The military often reserves large portions of the airspace of the California coast which needs to be flown around. This adds to the fuel needed to be carried. AS and UAL both have weight issues at times on their Hawaii flights on 737s of all variants.

I imagine Southwest would like to not go into a market having to block significant amount of seats. This will hurt their ability to offer lower fares or be competitive with other carriers.

Hawaii is very low yielding for the most part. Widely acknowledged industry wide to have a very high percentage of customers on reward tickets. Cargo can on some routes make up for it given the need for Hawaii to import and export everything. However, with passenger yields being so low and crew and fuel costs being higher on larger planes it can make good business sense to downside. Hence why AA and UAL both put smaller narrow bodies on Hawaii flying from the west coast. Hawaiian is ordering a lot of A321s. I imagine they too will put some of them on west coast trips.

Southwest will struggle on inter island hops if they ever do it. Hawaiian offers 25 flights daily between OGG-HNL. How can SWA compete with that?

Hawaii will likely happen for SWA but I doubt they are in a hurry to get into such a low yielding market.

expert7700

A friend who interacts with WN executives said that 3 or 4 managers were fired at HDQ after failing to account for the range/weight penalty for having a single class 175 seat cabin, versus other carriers mixed cabins with less overall seat. He said the error was caught after WN committed to ETOPS planes and GK was livid. ETOPS planes cost significantly more to initially equip/certify, and they are not needed for any of Southwest's current or planned Latin/South America routes.

Seats would have to be blocked from sale even from LAX/SFO. Plus they would have zero capacity for SWAcargo.

LegalTender

And a two-cabin configuration would redeem both the Hawaii/ETOPS pickle and WNs business travel ambitions.

Nice.

pinniped

Ouch. That's a wee bit of an error...

GottaLuvCruising

I've read speculation and rumors about Southwest flying to Hawaii, but can't seem to find any details. On our flight yesterday, I asked our flight attendant and she confirmed that it will be offered. I wish I had pursued the topic with her...

Does anyone know anything for certain?

palmetto86

Pro tip: Take anything an FA or pilot says re:company strategy with a grain of salt. That rule goes for any airline or any service industry in general.

returnoftheyeti

I bet if you asked her, she would also have confirmed coad sharing with Ryanair and flights to Dublin.

alggag

Generally speaking rank and file employees only know as much as the general public (or at least aviation enthusiasts and frequent flyers that are in the know) when it comes to things like route announcements and such. They might hear about it a few hours before it's officially made public but that's about it.

rsteinmetz70112

I'll second that I have. a few friends who work for Southwest (Pilots and FAs) and I know more about Southwest outside their own jobs and union contracts than they do,

FindAWay

Well, with no timeline offered, that's probably a fair guess by the FA...I mean, Hawaii in 2092 still is Hawaii.

But, Hawaii within say, 2 years ... I'm prognosticating a "No way."



Edited to Add:

OP - To get a sense of these repeated WN Hawaii rumors or "confirmations" that pass through this forum, I recommend reading some posts in these threads:

Consolidated WN Hawai'i rumors thread (post-ATA)

Southwest Airlines Service to Hawaii?

sdsearch

In any case, Hawaii has 7 commercial airports scattered across several islands, plus Southwest has partner airlines once again now (which was how "Southwest" got you to Hawaii the last time around), and a statement like that doesn't explain if they would fly the route themselves or take on a partner, and it doesn't explain if you could get to many islands or just one of them. (Nor, as pointed out already, does it explain what year, decade, or century this might happen in.)

smmrfld

Yes. I know for certain that FAs have consistently been amongst the least reliable information sources.