Southwest Airlines announces new daily service to London.
UPDATE: This was an April Fool’s Day Joke.
Southwest Airlines has announced the creation of a new subsidiary airline tentatively named Atlantic Express which will serve routes between New York City and London. The new subsidiary airline will be staffed by current Southwest Airlines crews and has placed an order with Boeing for new 747-8 Intercontinental aircraft.
Southwest Airlines CEO and President Gary Kelly is quoted at the 9am news conference saying “We looked at every kind of aircraft we could use for this route but the only one that made sense is the 747-8i. As most people know, we prefer new aircraft and our business model depends on both passenger volume and frequency. We went to Boeing and negotiated for the best deal possible on 10 new Boeing 747-8i aircraft to serve this route.”
There has been frequent speculation on what cities Southwest would use to serve New York City’s La Guardia airport (Southwest obtained 7 slot pairs to operate at the airport just a few months ago) and it would appear the question is answered now. Southwest will serve La Guardia once a day with flights from Chicago-Midway and Houston-Intercontinental feeding connecting traffic to 5 daily round trip flights to London-Heathrow airport.
Southwest’s / Atlantic Express’ new New York City schedule and aircraft can be viewed HERE.
This is too stupid to think about. Southwest makes it money by staying a one airplane airline and flying to inexpensive airports. How could they think this is the right way to go? When do they expect to launch this? 2009?