Marcio wrote:
>Jonathan Goodish wrote:
>
>>In article ,
>> zak wrote:
>>
>>> Well, after today's Chapter 11 filing by Delta and Northwest, it
>>> appears that American Airlines is now the only pre-deregulation U.S.
>>> major carrier left that hasn't seen a trip to Bankruptcy Court.
>>
>>
>>What about Southwest? They are certainly a major carrier, and were
>>flying for several years before deregulation.
>
>"Certainly" doubtful. Southwest is at a point of growth where some
>consider it a major airline while others consider it a regional
>airline. Most in the stock market industry, for example, still
>consider Southwest a regional airline. It depends on your criteria
>for a major carrier: revenue, number of passengers carried, number of
>routes, etc.
>
>To me, there is one distinction that separates a major carrier from a
>regional one: international destinations. When I'm at Brazil's GRU or
>Japan's NRT airports, I see the counters for American, Delta, and
>United. I have yet to see one for Southwest anywhere. With or
>without code sharing, Southwest doesn't fly anywhere but to 50 to 70
>domestic destinations. So, Southwest is not a major carrier, only a
>regional one.
I've always thought of them as a regional airline with a major
complex. :)
At heart they are still a local Texas airline which, through a
combination of luck and a folksy chain-smoking alcoholic CEO, have
found themselves with a coast-to-coast route map.
There's no big mystery to what they've done, nothing supernatural
about flying between Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio for $19.
Kelleher just seems to be a guy with a huge chip on his shoulder and
an inferiority complex who seemed to feel the need to play a "mine is
bigger than yours" contest with the ghosts of Charles Lindberg, Eddie
Rickenbacker, Juan Trippe, and Walter T. Varney. |