Yesterday, an Indianapolis bankruptcy court approved Southwest’s bid to acquire ATA’s 14 slots at New York’s LaGuardia airport, reports the Dallas Morning News (via FlyerTalk). The airline will start off with one gate (B2) at the airport. Southwest still hasn’t announced when or where it will start flying, but most speculation I’ve heard is that they would like to start flying sometime this summer. Southwest’s next schedule extension is slated for April 14, and I wouldn’t be surprised if LGA flights would be available for purchase by that time. As for where Southwest will start flying, my top choices are MDW, BNA, and BWI (in that order).
The newspaper article quoted Southwest’s Bob Montgomery as saying that “I think we would like to find a way to acquire more slots,” which I think makes total sense. I can understand Southwest not wanting to launch a large operation at LaGuardia, but I think more than seven roundtrips would be good.
Meanwhile, an article from Airline Business (also via FlyerTalk) has an interesting quote from Southwest’s Richard Sweet:
“Flying with a codeshare partner long-haul is certainly something we’re interested in doing in the long-term,” says Sweet. Asked whether an eventual codeshare deal with a long-haul airline could be a precursor to Southwest one day branching into the long-haul market with its own aircraft, Sweet responds that this would represent “another big move out of our present model and it would involve a different aircraft type, but I’m not saying we wouldn’t do it.” (Emphasis mine)
This is notable because in the past Southwest has said they’re going to focus on all-domestic flying, so this is interesting. One factor that could affect Southwest’s future flying is its employees. If I recall correctly, Southwest’s contract with its pilots has language relating to codeshare, and I believe a new agreement is still in the making. It seems that many Southwest employees were not too pleased with the WestJet and Volaris announcement, so that could mean a change coming for Southwest.
The brilliant minds at Southwest are working every possibility of tweaking their business model to bring in more profit. Because of their adaptations, there are now a lot of things the airline has said in the past that are no longer true. The international topic beings about a host of interesting possibilities.