Southwest Media Day: Wifi Pricing, Newark, Volaris, AirTran and More

Southwest

Good morning from the big D (that’s Dallas, ya’ll). I spent yesterday with the good people of Southwest at their sometimes-annual Media Day. There were a few announcements, but instead of diving into everything, I thought I’d just do an overview today. Look for more next week.

Bag Cop Academy

As you can see, the theme of Media Day was centered around Bags Fly Free. We all had mugshots taken and used those as our name tags. We also were given this graduation certificate from Bag Cop Academy at the end of the day. Kevin Krone, VP Marketing, Sales and Distribution even walked into the first session with his Bag Cop badge and mirrored sunglasses. He then went on to talk about the success of the program, but I’ll cover that more next week. Let’s look at the other highlights.

Wifi Now $5
For a long time, Southwest has said it’s experimenting with pricing for wireless internet. Yesterday, the announcement was made that it would be a flat $5 per flight regardless of distance and type of device (phone vs laptop).

Today, there are 32 airplanes equipped with wifi (maybe 31 since the one they trotted out for us yesterday didn’t actually work when we booted up), and there will be 60 by the end of this year. The 737-700s will be done by the end of 2012 and the 737-300s that are getting this (126 of them) will be done by mid-2013.

I like the flat rate per flight and $5 seems fair, but people obviously aren’t going to log on during those famous Southwest 1 hour flights, right? Well, maybe. Southwest has created a login portal that’s actually free. To start, it will have a moving map of your flight, access to Southwest.com, and shopping with HSN and SkyMall. So there still is a reason to boot up, even if you don’t want to pay. (I particularly like the moving map.)

I asked if people would be able to look up whether their flight would have wifi or not, and they said that won’t be until next year. People traveling on wifi flights now, however, do get emails the day before if they’ve given Southwest their email addresses.

Newark to Chicago and St Louis
Southwest will eventually have 18 daily flights out of Newark, and yesterday, CEO Gary Kelly told us about the first 8. Six will go to Chicago/Midway and I can’t imagine that’s a surprise to anyone. What is a bit more surprising is that the other two initial flights will go to St Louis. Both begin March 27.

I spoke at length with Bob Jordan, EVP of Strategy and Planning about the St Louis decision, and the thing that stuck with me is that this allows one stop flights to Dallas. Remember, until the Wright Amendment goes away, Chicago can’t go nonstop to Dallas but St Louis can.

This is also just part of the Newark story. The schedule was already closed, so Southwest had to reopen it and find a way to squeeze Newark in. This is what worked. We’ll see more to fill out the rest of the slots soon.

Volaris Partnership Finally Begins
After two long years, the Volaris partnership will finally go into effect for booking on November 12 and flying beginning December 1. This isn’t a codeshare but it’s as close as the two can get with existing technology at Southwest.

I’ll actually go into much greater detail on this next week, but it’s safe to say that this does open up new connecting opportunities but not nearly as much as I imagine it should. Still, it’s a step forward and that’s a good thing.

The 737-800 and Hawai’i
CEO Gary Kelly spoke at length about the 737-800 and the impact it will have if Southwest decides to order it (still hasn’t happened). He said it does open up Hawai’i as a possibility and it also allows Southwest to operate flights with lower unit costs which could be important in some markets. Could be an interesting airplane when it happens, and even though Gary said the decision hasn’t been made, it sounded like it really had been.

AirTran Update
You’re probably wondering about the AirTran merger, but there wasn’t really any news around that. Since the merger isn’t complete, they can’t really start sinking their teeth into things just yet. So all the juiciest questions went unanswered.

Bob Jordan did say that he thinks Atlanta has the potential to be the largest city in the Southwest system. COO Mike Van de Ven also went into detail on the 717 and how it has good trip costs for short trips, something that Southwest needs to serve small cities.


There was a ton more during the day but these were the biggest news highlights. Next week, I’ll be writing more about this here and on BNET with more in-depth looks at what’s happening.

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16 comments on “Southwest Media Day: Wifi Pricing, Newark, Volaris, AirTran and More

  1. wifi for $5 on long flts will seem like a deal to people who use it. Short haul will have to be wifi-addicts or businesspeople who’s company will pay for it.

    EWR-STL-DAL makes sense for WN as STL is a connecting point to other destinations and can give the 1stop DAL service. Still not nonstop so AA/CO have that advantage and can keep prices up because of it.

    The Volaris venture is shaping up finally so that should be interesting to see how it goes. It’s tests the waters out west since travel will be via OAK/SJC/LAX and people here travel to Mexico alot even if just for the weekend.

    Seems WN has a lot on it’s plate right now, hope they don’t rush into things to fast and screw things up.

  2. i think $5 is great value for many flights and is priced low enough that many 1 hr flight hoppers may do it just for the heckuvit. brett, do you know if they determined that they can break even or even make a little money at $5 a head or are they pricing it pretty aggressively to position it as a “perk”?

    $5 is basically the cheapest of the myriad options that gogo offers for DL and FL (and for F9 in the future), which range from $5 to $13 for single flight options depending on length and device used to connect to internet:

    https://www.gogoinflight.com/gogo/purchase.do;jsessionid=DED2EAC9DB12854CC32C66B0BD7909C7.node2?execution=e1s1

    as per WN’s norm, $5 a whack is certainly much more economical and straightforward than the mishmash of options presented by gogo. i don’t know how B6’s viasat service will be priced but they are giving it away right now on the “betablue” aircraft.

  3. also, i expect WN to be very aggressive in STL, with STL getting flights to all of the east coast business centers. along w/ FL’s presence in STL (flights to ATL, MCO, MKE), there is an opportunity for WN to essentially take over a top 20 sized market in STL. the STL East terminal provides WN with their own brand-new, exclusive-use airport that also offers plenty of expansion space simply by moving down the old Terminal D corridor. FL has two gates in terminal C that would eventually be co-located w/ WN.

  4. I am surprised that WNs free wifi portal allows the moving map. Delta has a similar deal but whenever I have tried to pull up the moving map I get some message about how the TSA won’t allow it.

    1. Eh. This is really sad, since I’m sure someone who really wants to know where the plane is would just use a GPS receiver. The other thing is you could probably just use flightstats.com to figure out where your plane is.

  5. I don’t understand how the 738 “opens-up Hawaii” — the 73G is perfectly capable of reaching Hawaii from the West Coast. Did he just mean for commercial reasons (i.e., the added capacity is better suited for a low-yield route?) If so, I still question that logic, since WN’s entire business is relatively low-yield.

    1. Didn’t really get any specifics on it – it was more of an off-handed comment. But I’m sure there are reasons that a 738 makes more sense for Hawai’i, including the lower seat costs. Also, maybe they would make all 738s ETOPS certified and then wouldn’t have to have a separate subfleet of 737-700s. I have no clue.

  6. The $5 per flight — is that per segment (takeoff/landing) or for a single numbered flight (including multi-stop “direct” flights)?

    1. Sure is. But I don’t even get it exactly right. Not sure that you want the full details, but just in case . . . .

      It’s not an apostrophe but rather an ?okina. (You can read details at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOkina) I put in a simple apostrophe when I type, but in reality, it should be like an open quote. It indicates a glottal stop in pronunciation. So while some call it “huh-WHY” is should be “huh-WAH-ee” with a stop between the “WAH” and the “ee.” Others say that the W should be pronounced as a V, but that seems to be up for dispute.

      1. that’s great. that’s what i was hoping for.

        i live in denver (boulder) and i fly 1 / month to NYC and i’d much prefer doing it on SWA. i’m praying for newark – denver!

        really enjoying your blog. you mention how you used to get all of the timetables when you were little . . . my brother and i did too. and then we created airplanes out of legos and made little signs and timetables all around the house. oh well.

        ever thought of attracting / managing guest posters? my company, kapost provides online newsrooms to help sites like yours utilize a large group of contributors. let me know if you’d be interested

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