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Having a more varied fleet would be vastly more expensive for Southwest to maintain, because they've bet heavily on having fleet consistency. Their ability to h

by lmkg 17y ago

Having a more varied fleet would be vastly more expensive for Southwest to maintain, because they've bet heavily on having fleet consistency. Their ability to handle baggage easily is only one aspect of this, and probably not the biggest one (I would guess spare parts is bigger). Other airlines that already have a varied fleet might be able to pull it off, but there's still large logistical issues. All of Southwest's planes are interchangeable. They only need one collection of spare parts for maintenance. If one plane needs to be taken out of service, it can be replaced by any other plane in the network. They only need one type of spare plane at each airport to cover contingencies. Their pilots and crew can all be re-assigned with negligible attention to specialization, certification, or even number of crew per flight. Any place that has a SWA connection will always have the correct capabilities for any flight that goes to or through that airport. They can make logistic changes to their network without considering compatibility issues. Compare this to an airline that dynamically re-adjusts the type of plane. You generally don't know baggage capacity until shortly before takeoff (unless you want to make everyone declare far in advance, which is itself a burden on travelers). This means that you need to either keep a bunch of spare planes of varying types at each airport, or fly empty planes around to meet demand, both of which are expensive. You also have to deal with, say, Denver having more 737s going in than out, and extra 757s piling up in Maui. In order to correct that you need to either fly empty planes, or use the wrong type of plane on some flights, probably over-large ones. Basically, airplanes are too big and expensive to realistically adopt "agility" as a business strategy. The overhead for preparing for/dealing with statistical anomalies piles up fast.

lotharbot 17y ago
Southwest's airplanes aren't quite identical. They fly 737-300's and -700's. The 300's are a bit smaller, with a lower service ceiling and a shorter range. At present, the 300's also have older avionics. They are not completely interchangeable. Still, maintaining only two types of airplanes that are very close to the same size and specs is a lot easier than maintaining ten types of airplanes with very different sizes and specs. The extra expense of sending a 700 on a flight that's only full enough to require a 300 (because they need a 700 on the other end) is much smaller than, say, the expense of flying a 747 for a route that only needs a 737. The extra expense of bumping one or two people (and giving them free flight vouchers) to free up a slightly larger plane for a different route is also quite small. As you correctly note, there are a lot of efficiencies that come in to play from having a nearly-uniform fleet.
kljhgfvgbn 17y ago
But it doesn't give them much negotiating power with Boeing. That's why Easyjet recently bought a bunch of A320s, you can bet the next round of shopping at Boeing will be a lot more interesting.

by lmkg 17y ago

lotharbot 17y ago

Southwest's airplanes aren't quite identical. They fly 737-300's and -700's. The 300's are a bit smaller, with a lower service ceiling and a shorter range. At present, the 300's also have older avionics. They are not completely interchangeable. Still, maintaining only two types of airplanes that are very close to the same size and specs is a lot easier than maintaining ten types of airplanes with very different sizes and specs. The extra expense of sending a 700 on a flight that's only full enough to require a 300 (because they need a 700 on the other end) is much smaller than, say, the expense of flying a 747 for a route that only needs a 737. The extra expense of bumping one or two people (and giving them free flight vouchers) to free up a slightly larger plane for a different route is also quite small. As you correctly note, there are a lot of efficiencies that come in to play from having a nearly-uniform fleet.

kljhgfvgbn 17y ago

But it doesn't give them much negotiating power with Boeing. That's why Easyjet recently bought a bunch of A320s, you can bet the next round of shopping at Boeing will be a lot more interesting.