But many fliers have been most affected by another part of Southwest’ changing business: where it flies.
Unlike its rivals’ hub-and-spoke networks that generally fan flights out from their biggest cities, Southwest made famous the spoke-to-spoke network, connecting cities directly with shorter, nonstop flights.
But over the past several years, Southwest has cut back in many of the smaller communities that were the trademark of its network, like Albuquerque, N.M., and Birmingham, Ala. Meanwhile, the airline has bolstered service to some of its biggest markets, such as Chicago and Baltimore, and launched flights to some of the nation’s biggest cities.
The result is a network that touches more places, often with fewer frequencies, and that’s centered on its biggest cities. It resembles, dare we say, the hub-and-spoke networks of its rivals.
Since April 2009, Southwest has added about two dozen destinations—it now serves 89–while increasing its number of monthly flights by just 2.3% to nearly 97,000, according to Innovata, an aviation-research firm. The figures don’t count its AirTran Airways unit. The airline did that by spreading itself thinner in places, cutting service from some existing cities to add just a handful of flights a day at new ones.
Southwest has also begun flying bigger planes to bigger cities. It has entered New York, Boston, Atlanta, Milwaukee and Denver, which is now one of its largest markets. As a result, it has cut back in nearby cities.
In New England, where it launched service to Boston, Southwest has cut its flights by 38% in Providence, R.I., and 47% in Manchester, N.H., since April 2009. It has cut 43% of its flights in Islip, N.Y., since April 2009 in the wake of new service at La Guardia and Newark Liberty International airports. It has even cut back big operations in Oakland, Calif., and San Jose, Calif., while beefing up at San Francisco International Airport.
Southwest also connects far more passengers at its largest hubs than in years past. In Chicago, for example, the airline connected 8,160 passengers a day in the first quarter last year, up from 2,275 a day there eight years earlier, according to masFlight, an airline-data provider. Its biggest cities rank among the largest connecting hubs in the U.S., according to masFlight.
Southwest Chief Executive Gary Kelly said in an interview that although the airline has adjusted its schedules “just a little bit” to better allow for connections, “we are still a point-to-point airline.” He said more than 70% of Southwest’s customers still fly nonstop – far more than its bigger rivals – compared to about 80% of customers when he started as CEO in 2004.
Indeed, Southwest hasn’t abandoned small cities overall. In the past five years, it has added service to Des Moines, Iowa; Grand Rapids, Mich.; Greenville, S.C.; Portland, Maine; and Wichita, Kansas. It has also found opportunities in some cities that are rapidly losing residents: Dayton, Ohio; Akron, Ohio; and Flint, Mich.
And Southwest has pulled out of big cities that aren’t working. It launched service to Philadelphia in 2006 to much fanfare, promising strong competition to the airport’s dominant carrier, US Airways Group Inc. But the business failed to meet expectations, and Southwest has slashed its Philadelphia flights by 60% over the past five years.
Still, Southwest’s general shift toward bigger cities with more competition promises to continue. In the recent divestment of slots at Reagan National Airport near Washington and La Guardia in New York as part of American Airlines Group Inc.’s antitrust settlement with the government, Southwest was the biggest beneficiary, buying enough slots to add 27 daily roundtrips at Reagan and 6 at La Guardia.
(Jack Nicas - The Wall Street Journal)
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