I don’t know if some of you know this, but Southwest Airlines is planning to operate to Hawaii soon. No one knows whether they would operate out of their focus city like LAX, OAK, LAS, or SAN. And according to this link I found, aviationblog.dallasnews.com/2009 … pe-s.html/, it says Southwest may operate to Europe and South America. But as you know, these are rumors.
If Southwest brings in good revenue from their ops to Hawaii, will there be a chance that they’ll think about operating to Canadian destinations like Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, Edmonton, Halifax, Ottawa, or Winnipeg from either one of their major focus cities like LAX, SAN, OAK, MDW, BWI, HOU, PHX, or ATL? How do you think their revenue would be if they started operating to one of those Canadian destinations listed?
Also, while we are still on the subject of Southwest, if their Hawaii flights become popular, would it be a good idea if the airline converted some of their Boeing 737-700 and -800 orders into 737-900ER orders, even though they have the future 737-8 MAX on order? The -900ER would fit more passengers and has a longer range, even though the MAX is due to fit more passengers and have a longer range.
Southwest is currently a domestic airline and as far as I know they are not looking to expand into Canada. They used to codeshare with Westjet but not anymore. It would be nice to see them here though!
Southwest’s current IT platform can’t handle international flights. Any Canadian flights would have to be operated using the Airtran platform (which is getting phased out) or wait until they have their new platform (which could take several years).
Transborder flights are also very tricky as the taxes are very high compared to the base fares on flights departing Canada (sometimes up to 40% of the total fare). This makes it hard to fare stimulate a route since the taxes are so darn high. This is why you’ve seen US airlines and AC downgauge to RJ’s on nearly every transborder route where range allows.
It’s also why you’re seeing many Canadian passengers drive to airports like BLI, PBG, BUF, and IAG to avoid the transborder flight taxes.
Have you checked out the extortion on short haul domestic flights lately?
OAK-LAX 21 day purchase on Southwest
base fare $43.72
Excise taxes $3.28
Segment fee: $3.90
PCF: $4.50
Security Fee: $2.50
Total taxes: $14.18 (32.4%)
Regarding the bottom four items on rw812, Segment, PFC, and Security Fee those are fixed $ are percentage based item so lower the base the high the percentage of taxes et al. With regard to Southwest to Canada, they want even have their reservation system ready until the end of 2014. Then they will have to butt heads against WestJet especially to/from LAS.
