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In response to
"More Southwest Airlines: Reducing Hawaii inter-island flying by 20% (they've been losing lots of money on that) -- nm"
by
ty97
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And a note from me, about a probably bad decision by Southwest post-merger with Airtran
Posted by
ty97
Sep 26 '24, 12:44
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Airtran flew two plane types:
Boeing 737
Boeing 717 (aka MD-95 rebranded after the Boeing/MD merger)
Southwest has always* flown only the 737 (several variants/sizes of the 737, but all 737). After they bought Airtran, they decided they didn't want the 717, so they could stay an all 737 airline.
The 717 worked in Airtran's fleet because it's a bit smaller than 737s. Not small, still over 100 seats, but small-ER than a lot of 737s. So it helps with smaller/thinner markets.
Anyway, Southwest decided they wanted to get rid of the 717s. Each of the 717s was between 11 and 14 years old at this point, so still quite young for an airplane. They couldn't (shouldn't) just retire them, there's potential value in them.
So they leased them all out to another airline for 5 years with (to my understanding) the right for the other airline to buy them outright at the end of the 5 years. The other airline did buy them all at the end of the 5 years.
That other airline?
Atlanta's own Delta Airlines. Who continue to fly those 717s today, many of them out of Atlanta, many of them on those smaller/thinner routes out of Atlanta directly cutting into Southwest.
The smallest Southwest plane today is the Boeing 737-700 with 143 seats. The Delta 717 has 110 seats (in Southwest all coach seating it might be more like 120 seats if Southwest had kept them)
And, word has it, that the deal even included Southwest paying to have the planes retrofit when Delta took them initially, to add first class, etc. Don't know the truth to that though.
*At some point in the late 70s/early 80s, they apparently flew some Boeing 727 as well.
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