Southwest starts new focus campaign on Atlanta...

WN is DOOMED!  DOOMED, I tell you.  Not only will you fail against mighty Dullta, but since your moonthumbs per available seat gallon are so much less than Dullta's percentage of quality revenue, you will also learn to regret getting rid of those used MD90's and B717s or whatever a/c AT was flying..
 
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no, WN is not doomed. They will live or die based on the schedule. The advertising campaign is to be expected but they will win or lose in the market based on the amount of flights they offer.

ATL, like Chicago are cities that have always had very high levels of air service. The way that smaller carriers such as FL in the beginning broke into ATL was by offering very low fares. WN can't do that - it's costs are only about 6% lower than DL's on a direct ASM basis.

WN will have a presence in ATL but I suspect a lot of the cities that have only a couple flights/day will lose it because DL has so much more service in those markets.
 
jimntx said:
WN is DOOMED!  DOOMED, I tell you.  Not only will you fail against mighty Dullta, but since your moonthumbs per available seat gallon are so much less than Dullta's percentage of quality revenue, you will also learn to regret getting rid of those used MD90's and B717s or whatever a/c AT was flying..
LOL.  That was funny, thx for the laugh...
 
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I’m sure they won’t mention that they have cancelled 8 cities over past year and that there are another 12 which WN serves with 2 or less flights/day (all of which DL serves with at least twice as many flights) or that the total number of seats is down by 13% and flights are down by more than 20%.
 
there's nothing there about expansion... which is nothing but a figment of your imagination.

WN has reduced its seats and has a marginal presence in a number of markets where they will not get anywhere close to parity with DL in terms of local market revenue... but if WN wants to try to pretend it can make a bunch of markets work with a couple flights per day in markets where DL has far more service, they are free to try.

in case you missed it, the exact thing has played out in PHL where WN pulled back to a handful of key markets as well as in SLC.

WN got its presence in ATL and can easily have a decent sized operation to a dozen major cities on its network. the presence number of cities from ATL will shrink.
 
"the presence number of cities from ATL will shrink"

So the SWA Planning Committee invited you in on their current and future plans? If they didn't invite you, someone must have told you their plans, since you, as a retired Delta employee would surely know of this most highly sensitive information and state it on an Internet forums.

Boeing and LUV are searching the globe for slightly used aircraft. An airliners.net poster showed 3 birds that were recently secured and about to be modified. Maybe you missed that since you were banned from that site. Maybe with new planes, you'll see new ATL service.

Additionally, G. Kelly stated that LUV would return to growing again when ROIC hit the 15% mark and it did. The focus has been on Air Transport Intergration, achieved, new reservations system, achieved, setting Love Free, achieved, building a new International Terminal, almost done and you don't think LUV will sit around? Between new opportunities in DCA and LGA EWR, LUV closed small cites that AT used in ATL, LUV now wants focus on ATL and it seems to have gotten your dander up.
 
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they don't need to invite me.

the laws of competition are pretty clear... carriers that are outclassed by competitors on a route by a factor of 3-4 times do not survive. It isn't a WN thing or a DL thing or specific to any airline - and no other airline has demonstrated it can succeed AGAINST those principles.

WN is operating a couple times a day at most in markets where DL has far more frequency - and in some cases where other carriers also have frequencies as well.

WN is not going to grow in ATL again. I'm sorry if that breaks your heart but they knew full well when they gave up markets in ATL, they were gone forever.

the only way that WN could regain a position in markets against a much larger carrier is via much lower price - and WN cannot do that given its costs relative to DL.

again, the very same thing happened to WN vs. US in PHL.

why some people seem to think that ATL will term out any differently is simply illogical.


WN has a million other opportunities where they can grow without running up against a highly profitable airline in the largest hub in the world. They simply do not care about having a size of operation in ATL that a lot of people here seem to think they should have.
 
For now, it's just a marketing campaign, but given the grief DL has directed towards WN over DAL in the past year, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if they threw in a few more flights at ATL just to piss off Hauenstein.
 
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For now, it's just a marketing campaign, but given the grief DL has directed towards WN over DAL in the past year, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if they threw in a few more flights at ATL just to piss off Hauenstein.
WN still has at least 28 gates in Atlanta.
Why would they hold onto all these gates if they don't plan on using them?
For the number of flights there now, WN only needs 12-15 gates.
 
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perhaps and perhaps also DL could take some of those gates and reduce WN's costs - if DL gained long-term access to DAL.
 
eolesen said:
For now, it's just a marketing campaign, but given the grief DL has directed towards WN over DAL in the past year, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if they threw in a few more flights at ATL just to piss off Hauenstein.
WN is a profit-oriented company that doesn't do things that harm the bottom line.

the whole reason why WN does as well as it does is because it builds its network around cities that it can dominate and where it has little competition, esp. from legacy carriers.

ATL is neither and a few flights or an advertising campaign won't change that. WN will drop some of the dozen or so cities that have only a couple flights/day or less and end up focusing on their largest cities.. no different from the way most legacies operate in another carrier's hubs - to their own hubs.