"TOliver" wrote:
>Zak, as for the legacies, like to monuments in the vast wastes of Nubia seen
>by Iskander, they may be no more than deteriorating remnants of once proud
>companies that saw them selves (and were seen by their employees) as
>Immortals. After all, most every "legacy" started with one or two routes
>across the dusty plains of America - or the Florida Straights, and WN had
>three, HOU/SAT/DAL, a golden triangle for $19.95 a leg after 5PM on
>Friday... Throw in Austin and El Paso, and all of a sudden, you have a
>major airline, the highest pax number carrier in Califormnia these days, is
>it not?
>
>TMO
You are missing the point. Nobody is disputing the fact that
Southwest and the other LCCs have a valid business model. They
obviously do. The point is that it is foolish and irrelevant to even
attempt to compare the Legacies with the LCCs. They are different
models of different eras.
Yes, we all know that Legacies are pre-historic dinosaurs that are
dying an agonizingly slow, painful death. The U.S. government dealt
the death blow with the 1978 De-regulation Act. The surprise isn't
that the Legacies are dying, if anything what is surprising is that
it's taken so long.
You simply cannot compare the object of your religious fervor,
Southwest, with the Legacies. Southwest doesn't have to compete with
European airlines who offer a superior product across the Atlantic.
Southwest doesn't have to compete with Asian carriers who offer a
vastly superior product across the Pacific. Southwest doesn't have to
fly a mix of different aircraft for different markets. Southwest
doesn't offer interline baggage transfers. Southwest doesn't even
offer advance seat assignments, an extremely basic thing which even
the cheapest of the other cheap carriers out there manages to do.
The bottom line: there is no comparison.
Does Southwest represent the future of U.S. domestic aviation? Yes,
unfortunately. It's lowest common denominator transportation. Peanut
fares for trailer trash folks. |