Southwest CEO Gary Kelly spoke about using Baltimore’s airport (Baltimore Washington International – BWI) as a “hub” for international flights some time in the future.  He described it as being a number one consideration during conversations about Southwest going international.

Before anything else, don’t go presuming that Southwest is about to buy trans-Atlantic aircraft and start low cost services to Europe.  They aren’t as there is way too much on their plates right now.  However, it is another logical area to grow into once they are done digesting Airtran in about 3 years and provided the market exists at that time.

Quite a few might question using Baltimore but it does make sense.  It is relatively uncongested and offers the ability to not just draw those in Baltimore to its flights but also from the Washington D.C. and Philadelphia areas as well.  In addition, it connects nicely to all of the cities that Southwest services in the eastern half of the United States.  Furthermore, it is likely that any LCC airline taking on such a venture need not be tied to a major international airport such as JFK or Philadelphia or Washington Dulles.  In fact, they would probably want to avoid such airports because the cost of congestion is far higher than the cost of attracting people to some place like Baltimore.

Potential customers for this kind of airline service won’t be business oriented.  These will be leisure passengers looking for a great deal.  You won’t see business class on these airplanes but I do think you’ll see assigned seating.  (Assigned seating is almost a must for a widebody aircraft, IMHO.)

What kind of aircraft?  It won’t be 757s and I don’t *think* it will be 767s.  Although, it is interesting to contemplate the economics of an all economy 767-300ER new build aircraft for trans-Atlantic flights.  Many have thought that the 767 will remain competitive on such routes vs the 787 and that might be true.  787s?  Maybe but I think Southwest might have missed the train when it comes to advantageous pricing on that aircraft and I don’t think SWA will find used 787s on the marketplace anytime soon.

Airbus A330s almost seem interesting until you consider just how many people you would have in a high density, all economy aircraft like that.  It feels like too many and the same is true for the 777-200 (but I think you could almost make a business case for early build 777-200 “A” models that are starting to be retired by airlines such as United.)   The fact is that the 767-300 or 787-8 fits the size category almost perfectly and size will drive this choice. 

So will dispatch reliability because someone like Southwest needs an aircraft they can push into high utilization for such routes.  Not only would trans-Atlantic service require good load factors but it also requires frequency that uses that aircraft on 2 to 3 segments a day.  It’s doable and it is doable with the 767.

But at the end of the day, it’s all speculative right now and I do not expect SWA to announce anything like this at all until at least 3 years have passed.  In the meantime, they’ll gain experience operating Airtran’s international flights and learn how to deal with foreign travel.  They can buy and/or engineer new IT infrastructure that will meet the needs of such flights.  In short, don’t go planning a family vacation to London quite yet.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax