At least it’s not as bad as flying into Paris-Vatry airport, only to find out you’re 160 km (!) from the airport’s namesake.
Yes, they do. I was just saying that hypothetically if they did add another type of plane they are big enough now that it wouldn’t add a significant additional expense, and could potentially have advantages.
I suspect Southwest gets a very nice volume discount from Boeing, too.
Back in the '80’s during the height of the Hawaii interisland fare wars, Mid Pacific Air used turboprop planes and because of this, the flights between islands were longer. Generally not an issue, but they were notorious for delayed and cancellations of their flights (due to higher maintenance on the older planes), which were already limited. My friend called it the “Three bounce airline” because the landing was never smooth, with at least one (more often at least two) bounces on the landing. I’ve never been able to figure out if it the the pilot or the plane itself that was the cause of the bounce(s).
They consider themselves an IT company with airplanes. My daughter worked for it - the project managers get paid a decent amount at least. I’ve flow it on benefits, and then you get luggage free.
However employees are advised to not tell their seatmates that they work for Allegiant when flying.
(Agilent, btw, is the test company spun off from HP.)
Southwest seems to hinge their low prices on three or four things - one type of aircraft (737), alternate airports (i.e. Chicago Midway, not O’Hare), point-to-point (not hub & spoke) , and extremely quick turnarounds.
They don’t charge for bags, toilet paper, soft drinks, etc… like some of their imitators do.
The funny thing about Midway vs O’Hare is that Midway is actually closer to the Loop than O’Hare and easier to get in and out of (quicker by both car or public transport, plus there’s no surcharge on the el from Midway to get into the city.) I happen to live less than two miles as the crow flies from MDW, but it is just so much more a pleasant experience than flying into or out of O’Hare, and if you don’t have to be in a conference out in Schaumburg or Rosemont or whatnot and are here to explore the city, it makes a hell of a lot more sense to fly into Midway.
I live in Wisconsin, and we have buses straight to O’Hare and Midway. I often choose Midway (smaller, right off the freeway, and Southwest flies out of there). Southwest also flies out of Milwaukee, where you can hit a great used bookstore before your flight.
When I fly with my wife, she chooses the most convenient route/carrier. When it’s just me, I’ll take a bus ride to catch a Southwest or Frontier flight with a long layover at some awkward airport. Just to save $100.
Oh, notice I didn’t mention Spirit. They stranded my son, cancelling the second leg of his flight from SF to NYC. They said they owed him nothing, because they offered to book him on their next flight… which was five days later.
Not telling other passengers that you’re flying “non-rev(enue)” is standard for all airlines. It prevents people from inquiring about how much you paid (which you must never do and could get your daughter in trouble) and thinking (whether it’s true or not) you’ve bumped a regular paying passenger.
Are Southwest’s fares actually any cheaper than their competition nowadays, though? The times I’ve checked they usually seem to be the more expensive option, at least when booking well in advance (I know, anecdote != data). I have heard that Southwest’s walk-up fares are lower than the legacies, however. Maybe that’s where the difference lies.
It is worth noting that Southwest has dropped their alternate airport strategy as of maybe a decade or so ago. They now offer some flights out of San Francisco in addition to Oakland, and they now fly to Boston, Newark, and New York-LaGuardia as well.
Also, supposedly back when other airlines started adding fees for checked bags, the ticketing software Southwest was using at the time was so antiquated they couldn’t charge for bags even if they wanted to. So they spun it as a positive thing. I don’t believe that’s the case anymore; I think after they merged with AirTran then moved everything over to their ticketing system.
That’s another thing about those airlines. All the legacy airlines have reciprocal ticketing agreements with one another, so if American Airlines cancels your flight and they can’t get you on another one of their flights, they can book you on a Delta or United flight if they have to. Low cost airlines do not have these agreements. If your Spirit or Alligient flight gets canceled your options usually are A) wait for their next flight, which might not be for several days, or B) Take a refund and fend for yourself. Southwest doesn’t have those agreements either, but they usually have multiple flights every day so they usually can rebook you on another Southwest flight.
There’s definitely still a “Southwest effect” of lowering fares on particular routes. In fact this summer, Southwest was going to start flying to Hawaii, which was supposed to decrease fares overall on the route. (Except I think they planned to use the Max 8 planes on the route, so they may not have started.)
Alternate airports aren’t always the least convenient; they’re just not somewhere you can get a lot of connecting flights to elsewhere. Dallas Love and Houston Hobby are FAR more convenient for most purposes within those cities, except if you’re trying to go elsewhere on a non-Southwest flight. Then it’s a total pain, as IAH is like 30 miles from Hobby, and DFW is similarly far from Love Field.
SWA flies into the main airport in some cities (San Antonio, New Orleans, Kansas City, for example), and in at least one case (Los Angeles), flies into multiple airports, including the “main” one- they fly into Ontario, John Wayne and LAX.
I think the idea is that the alternate airports like Midway, Hobby, etc… are cheaper for them to fly into- lesser fees from the cities’ aviation departments, than the larger airports.
Never heard that - and the Allegiant thing is not official policy, just a suggestion by employees on a web site.
Being dressed decently when you fly non-rev is a thing.
You never bump a regular passenger - unless they show up really late, maybe. We have been in seats that deadheading employees thought they were going to get. The rules are that you are standby, but get the best available seat. (Though if you get bumped to first class you don’t get first class food, I think.)
North Americans are usually happy to rent a car at an airport to drive 50 miles to where they actually want to be.
The nearest international airport to the Grand Canyon is 275 miles away, in Las Vegas.
The nearest international airport to Mount Rushmore is Denver, 291 miles away.
The driving distance from Toronto to Niagara Falls 78 miles, etc.
I wish that were the case, but I’ve gotten bumped along with my travel partner from an American Airlines flight about twenty years ago. This was back when there was even a suggestion to call the airline to confirm your flight and your presence on it the day before (which most people didn’t seem to do anyway), which we did and we arrived to the airport early. Still got bumped. No explanation was given, but at least we were given decent compensation (entire flight was refunded, next flight out we got bumped up to first class, plus we got something like $50 in food vouchers.) Worked for me, but we were pissed at being bumped after doing everything by-the-book.
But the problem with Midway (also Dallas-Love, Houston-Hobby, and for that matter NY-LaGuardia and Washington-Reagan) is that they’re barely big enough to fly a 737 or Airbus 300 in and out of during daylight in good weather. Flying into and out of Midway during a snowy or sleeting evening is a white-knuckle experience.
I think it’s partly that and partly that those airports are less busy and therefore less prone to delays, which facilitates their fast turnarounds.
Love Field is an interesting case, in that Southwest chose it specifically because it was more convenient to the city of Dallas, even though staying there made things difficult for them. In the 1960s Love Field was bursting at the seams and clearly needed to be replaced. So the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth agreed to jointly build a new airport, DFW, on the condition that Love would close to passenger traffic so it wouldn’t compete with the new airport. So all the airlines serving Love Field at the time signed an agreement to solely fly to DFW after it opened. Except for Southwest, which didn’t start flying until 1970. Dallas tried to get Southwest to agree to move to DFW, but they didn’t want to because their business model at the time was short flights within Texas, and they thought their passengers wouldn’t want to drive all the way to DFW just for a flight to San Antonio or Houston. So they sued to be allowed to stay at Love and won. Or maybe it was the other way around; maybe Dallas sued to make them move and lost. Either way the city of Dallas wasn’t happy about this. They didn’t want to have to keep maintaining the passenger terminal at Love; they’d planned to close it and make Love a purely general aviation and cargo airport. They made things difficult for Southwest for a while, doing things like closing the lobby and forcing Southwest to set up a makeshift ticket counter in baggage claim. And then came deregulation and the Wright Amendment, but I’ve written enough already. But the point is that throughout all this Southwest has remained steadfast in their insistence at staying at Love Field to this day.
Never bugged me. I guess YMMV. (I honestly never felt any different flying in or out of Midway than any other airport, and I’ve been in and out of Midway, I dunno, maybe fifty times? in all sorts of weather.)
I don’t think that’s true for Dallas-Love; I’m pretty sure 707s flew there back before DFW opened, and those needed a lot more runway than a 737. But it’s true for all the others. Pretty much the main reason Dulles, O’Hare, etc were built was because the older airports in those cities couldn’t handle 707s, DC-8s, etc.
Some forms of operational leases are 100 percent deductible expenses vs a loan for a plane where only the interest and operating expenses/depreciation. the principal on the plane becomes an asset.
“Take a refund and fend for yourself?” That would’ve been much better than what Spirit did.
They cancelled for no reason (weather was fine, so agents had no idea why), and offered NO refund. My teenage son had to buy a ticket on another airline with what little money he had with him.
He got no refund from Spirit, because they offered to book him on their next flight from O’Hare to NYC. All he’d have to have done was to wait from Thursday to Tuesday for the next flight.