Southwest Airlines got final approval from its pilot union on an agreement to introduce the 737-800 into the fleet and Southwest did what we all expected Southwest to do:  They announced they’ll be buying the 737-800.

I’m sure we’ll see these aircraft first on flights into and out of slot controlled airports such as NYC La Guardia’s or Washington D.C.’s Reagan National.  The speculative part is Hawaii.  Yes, these aircraft will have the range but that’s just the first issue to overcome.  To fly to Hawaii, Southwest would also have to have these aircraft ETOPS certified.

ETOPS certification would have to be kept up on every aircraft or on a small subset of aircraft that would operate from the West Coast.  There is a certain complexity there that, to me, doesn’t smell like something Southwest would be immediately ready to accept.  They know the value of Hawaii already and I think they would like to fly there via a partner or by themselves again at some point but how soon?

Look for these aircraft to show up in about 1.5 years.  They’ll first deploy to the slot controlled airport routes.  Next, don’t be surprised to see Southwest introduce some trans-continental services with these aircraft.  I don’t think we’ll see a lot of trans-con flying but I think we might see a few select routes get developed with the -800.  If those go well and they like how those distances feel, we then might see SWA prepare to fly to Hawaii provided they can figure out how to maintain ETOPS on either the whole -800 fleet or a subset of that fleet.

In other words, Hawaii is probably at least 3 years away if not more.  SWA may well try to link up with another partner and that isn’t necessarily a bad idea.  However, I think the unions have made it clear that they want to keep the flying “in-house” going forward as much as possible.   With the Airtran merger still on its plate and the integration of the two airlines over the next 2 years, I think a more realistic time to see a flight to Hawaii might be in as much as 5 years.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax