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Southwest Looking to Fly International?
By miller22 | March 5, 2008
The airplane geek community (of which I am a proud card-carrying member) is all a’ twitter about a new job posting located at Southwest.com. The position is for a Safety and Federal Aiport Security Department manager, International Security Operations.
I’ll be the first to express skepticism about the conclusions being drawn that this posting is a sign of international operations at Southwest, but it did get me thinking about Southwest’s international prospects., So I immediately put the staff here at the Airline Empires HQ on the story. (AE “staff” and “HQ” consist of myself and my loyal German Shephard, Indy in what used to be my office, but now doubles as a guest bedroom because the wife said we just “had” to have a guest bedroom more than I “had” to have an office once the baby arrives.)
Why would Southwest open international routes?For an airline the size of Southwest with the name “Southwest” and a base of 
operations in said region of the States, it’s quite a feat that there are no SWA routes into Mexico. It makes sense that the lowest-fare carrier in the country remain exclusively domestic to capitalize on those low fare markets. But Southwest is no longer the lowest-fare carrier, and at times i even find it difficult to consider them “low-fare” with the new ultra-low fare money losers….err, I mean airlines, that are emerging.
A national border does present a considerable obstacle for automobile traffic, which Southwest has always found itself in competition with. It seems very natural for Southwest to bask in the higher yields of Mexico traffic, the majority of which originates from or is destined to the Southwest U.S. Besides, after their success in Denver it only makes sense to continue the frontal attack on Frontier and hit the Mexican markets. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of Flip and the gang painted on Frontier’s tails, but being nice to your competition is not one of the prerequisites for making money in this industry.
As Southwest grows, it is gradually finding itself with fewer and fewer untapped domestic markets. They were probably licking their chops in Dallas over the prospect of moving into Cincinnati after a DL/NW merger, but with the apparent death of that deal makes matters worse. Something will eventually have to give to find new markets, and I don’t think it’s going to involve smaller aircraft.
Since I just lost the attention of the other half of my staff due to what was apparently an unresistable bouncing ball, it’s time to wrap this up. This job posting is most likely not related to any new international operations at Southwest, but don’t be suprised if it happens anyway. Regardless, I still consider Southwest’s venture into Mexico inevitble, and I don’t think there are more than a handful of people in Dallas who would disagree with me.
But what do I know? I thought Betamax was a sure bet.
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Topics: Southwest |