Southwest Airlines: Radical Transformation of Business Model Incoming? Buy or Sell or Hold?

yes

I’m still bag holding SAVE so I can’t get involved with another airline…

Investors have poured their money in airlines for a 100 years with terrible results.

Will be interesting to see how it unfolds. Their management has made a lot of good decisions over the years so I think this either boosts revenue, or it flops and they revert back. In general Southwest is the only airline stock I’d ever consider holding. They have the same flight traffic volume as the other big carriers while only flying to half as many destinations, and all using the same type of aircraft.

Basically, they know their customers and provide an optimized and efficient experience. With both JetBlue and Spirit on shaky legs right now, there’s a lot of domestic air travel volume that could be going up for grabs, and Southwest is positioned well to capitalize.

>With that in mind, Southwest is considering breaking the cabin into three parts:

>* The front third of the plane would be branded as Premium/Premier
* The middle third of the plane would be branded as Select (exit row seats would still be considered Premium/Premier, if they fall in this zone)
* The back third of the plane would be branded as Standard

They should have taken a page out of the playbook of the USDA and used Prime, Choice, and Select.

Southwest Airlines exists because they took the turnaround time on an airplane from an hour and twenty minutes down to 40 minutes.

That’s it.

The reason their boarding process historically worked like it did for them was because it impacted their turnaround times. No assigned seating is more efficient.

Unless Standard seating gets seated first, this doesn’t help their efficiency gain. In fact, it makes them like every other airline and they lose efficiency.

Sell.

SWA is broke. Has no money and extremely dated IT systems. Upset crews and pilots. Yeah it’s going to moon

Only thing I know is I booked a ticket from KCI to D.C. and southwest wanted $300 per leg. I got $300 round trip on AA.

Southwest is barely better than spirit. I’d welcome better seating, boarding, and new classes. If they could introduce first class, I’d be stoked. Even if it’s “Delta level” first.

I don’t like airlines. For 3 years I heard dal luv and ual, 1000 shares of each in my portfolio for the sake of theta only. I sold covered calls for years. After 3 years last month closed my positions. Even after the premiums I received from selling calls performance was not worth the work. Not buying another airline stock ever.

>Southwest’s plans seem way too complicated

That summarizes my feelings perfectly. Also southwest sucks donkey dick to begin with, so… Just let me pick my fucking seat like the rest of the world, even movie theaters can do it.

The only ones who ever made money were the ones buying puts on 9/10/01

The CEO did mention recently trying to generate more income so this would be a way to do it. The only problem is with how much they’ve spent trying to improve their existing boarding process to milk every second, it seems wild they would move to a slower traditional boarding structure.

I don’t see this as a thing unless they decide to expand into airbus models. The 737s are all uniform for a reason and this kind of change would cause problem from maintenance, boarding, and even crew training possibly (minor deviations but still there depending on if they need to sac a row for more space in the premium side).

You could do this on a 321 and since it would be brand new, you wouldn’t ruin your existing behemoth.