"zak" wrote in message
news:7emji19bh1m25is685joml4p195l4nevo9@4ax.com...
>
> 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.
>
And this is a good thing because it is much cheaper to fly now than it was
before 1978.
> You simply cannot compare the object of your religious fervor,
> Southwest, with the Legacies.
Yes you can...
> Southwest doesn't have to compete with
> European airlines who offer a superior product across the Atlantic.
They also don't have to use the same business model for domestics that they
do for international. It, of coursr doesn't help that many of the foreign
carriers are subsidized to offer that ?superior product.
> Southwest doesn't have to compete with Asian carriers who offer a
> vastly superior product across the Pacific.
ditto
> Southwest doesn't have to
> fly a mix of different aircraft for different markets.
They don't have to either. The fleet has been upgraded since 1978. They
could have used a one type model like SW.
> 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.
>
Not offering these things doesn't seem to be hurting SW in anyway.
> The bottom line: there is no comparison.
>
Sure there is. SW didn't have the legacy problems but the legacy carriers
could have and it is quite easy to say should have changed the model at
least 10 years ago. They didn't and soon all of them will be a memory.
> Does Southwest represent the future of U.S. domestic aviation? Yes,
> unfortunately. It's lowest common denominator transportation. Peanut
> fares for trailer trash folks.
That is the most elitist crap I have ever heard and it is just silly to
boot. AA or UA (the only legacy carriers I've flown on recently) gave poorer
service than SW and all of the employees acted as if someone had just stuck
a stick up their ass. Of course, I wouldn't be in a very good mood if my job
was hanging by a thread either.
The legacy carriers should have all gone into bankruptcy long ago. The
discounted planes would have been a could deal for all the new LCC that
replaced them.
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