Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly speculated that Southwest could one day be flying to Hawaii and that has tongues wagging in the airliner world.   Kelly mentioned this possibility in connection with their decision to purchase the 737-800 which they should arrive at very soon.

The fact that no one confirmed that Southwest would in fact buy the 737-800 at their recent media day leads me to believe that they are still in negotiations with Boeing and probably it has to do with price more than anything.

Still, even if they add the 737-800, it doesn’t mean they’ll do Hawaii.  Flights to Hawaii require more than just that aircraft.  It means proving you can do ETOPS flights and it means keeping a sub-fleet of aircraft that can do ETOPS flights.  ETOPS means flight crews get more training and aircraft are specially equipped and specially maintained. 

Alaska Airlines is doing such flights at present and they appear to be succeeding well enough that they’re adding flights to Hawaii from other cities.   It is doable and it may well be profitable.

However, if this does happen, I think it might happen in 4 or 5 years, not next year or the following.  Southwest has a bunch of things to chew on at present such as their merger with Airtran, phasing in new IT systems and just adopting not one but two new aircraft types:  the 737-800 and the 717. 

If this does happen, it’ll happen once they’ve managed to digest their other challenges.  Don’t go looking for that Honolulu destination on their website just yet.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax