"Dave Stadt" wrote in message
...

Southwest flies more passengers by far than any other airline

Actually SWA has only become a top-5 player in the past five years or so.
Last I checked, DL, SW, and AA were all pretty close to each other.

http://www.bts.gov/press_releases/20...bts019_04.html

and is one of
a few actually making money. If other airlines want to survive it is the
Southwest model they will have to adopt.


Southwest does not operate a national network, but rather flies a large
number of point-to-point flights. The difference is subtle but significant.
SW is fine if you're going from Manchester to Midway, but if you're trying
to get to Boise it doesn't necessarily work so well and connection times
often run over two hours versus 60mins on a hub-and-spoke carrier. As
Southwest has gotten bigger and served more cities with higher frequency
this has become less of a problem, but their model has its limits. They
intentionally avoid most large airports (BOS, ORD, JFK, LGA, EWK, SFO) as
well.

-cwk.