AUS is well-served by WN (not to my liking :D). WN's one outside perimeter DCA slot is used for DCA-AUS, as an example of what AUS means for WN. Plus, AA and UA have massive hubs very close to AUS and very frequent service to those hubs, and G4 and F9 are doing their best to push in here as well. AUS-LAX is one of the few routes in the entire USA served multiple times daily by all four of AA, UA, DL, and WN. VX would be in a bloodbath trying to compete with that.

Or deciding to compete with Wn on a route where WN doesn't have such a solid lock. As a DAL flyer, I think the VX LAS option is great.

You'll take VX over WN?

The only tough part of the decision is that VX doesn't have a free companion pass. As VX silver out of Dal, the upgrades are easy.

I continue to believe that for many flyers (me not one of them), the WN Companion Pass is the single best frequent flyer benefit that exists.

Upgrades as a silver are easy - from what to what?

Main Cabin to MCS?

Main Cabin to F?

MCS to F?

What are the upgrade costs for the DAL-LAS flights?

How about new routes DAL-FLL/MCO? Can they complete against WN?

You're forgetting that they only have 2 gates at DAL.
I'm sure LGA and DCA to/from SFO and LAX are better uses (higher yield) for those gates.

Right! Only they have 2 gates, but they didn't build more new gate space at the another terminals. Only they have 20 gates. It would be too impossible to gets more gates.

To be fair, DAL physically has been much larger, having 32 gates until relatively recently. The 20 gate restriction is a limitation of the Wright Amendment repeal, not any sort of physical limitation of the Love Field land area.

Why restrictions? Is that Wright Amendment? I just don't understand it.

The Wrong Amendment (as I like to call the Wright Amendment, which is named for former Speaker of the House and DFW-area Congresscritter Jim Wright) was an effort to forcibly build up DFW at the expense of DAL. It was not unlike similar rules for LGA and DCA (with perimeter limits and a cap on slots allocated beyond that), but it was far more draconian in that while DCA and LGA are, IIRC, mostly capped to something like 1250 or 1500 miles (LGA having an exception for Denver and DCA having a lot of "political" exceptions for 1-2x daily flights) DAL was capped to Texas and the bordering states (and later MS and KS, IIRC). Southwest worked around this for many, many years (and some of their routing practices are carry-overs from this).

In order to get the Wrong Amendment repealed without the airlines at DFW raising a stink, Southwest had to agree to cut the number of gates at DAL from 32 to 20. Now, they didn't mind...they have 16 gates and it's really hard for anyone to truly fight them with only a fraction of the remaining four gates; even if they had to give up a gate or two, being able to trade a few gates for a guarantee of never having coherent competition at DAL was probably a spectacular deal in the end.

In an ideal world, there would be a serious push to hike the number of gates at DAL from 20 to 24 or 28 or something like that (with most or all of the new gates going to someone other than Southwest)...but none of the other airlines are likely to bother with that, the DFW folks would fight like hell, and Southwest would likely fight like hell to stop it. What is more likely in the long term is that Southwest quietly gets out of the way of the HSR project in Texas (Texas Central, for reference) and uses that project as a way to reallocate DAL slots (previously limited to "local" use, remember) to higher-revenue, longer-haul flights from Dallas-Houston routings.

DAL is my favorite spot to connect in the U.S. now. Great terminal, great bars, and as silly as the 20 gate limit is, makes connections infinitely easier than at DFW.

This is a good point...I know I grumble about the low gate limit, but it really is a "cozy" airport for being in such a major position...it's more on par with, say, PHF in terms of feel.