Southwest goes to Sweden!!!

Southwest goes to Sweden! Well, only as a participant at the annual Routes conference, a networking fair for airlines and airports from across the world. So, the airline is not going to be flying Hobby-Arlanda...not anytime soon though. The LCC did though make some eyebrow raising comments though:

Southwest international service with its own aircraft is "in the pipeline of things we're interested in...that's way out in the future for us [though]," said by Bob Jordan, Southwest's executive vice president for strategy, procurement and technology.

As a matter of fact, Southwest will offer international service in 2009...but with codeshare flights on partner ATA...and only to nearby destinations, such as Caribbean, Mexico, and Canada.

Long-haul low-cost is with us today, both on traditional network carriers and with dedicated carriers. As one LCC executive commented on low-cost long-haul, “Our biggest competitor is the back-end of a 747.” Traditional carriers are able to offer low-cost fares in their lowest classes. However, these may not be economically viable and are not always on offer. Oasis in Hong Kong and Air Asia X offer dedicated low-cost long-haul. It only makes sense for Southwest to cautiously enter this market via their partner ATA. The airline has codeshared in the past with the carrier from Iceland, but this was short-lived. The models are morphing and this is a natural transition.