I have avoided writing this post for just shy of a year because there wasn’t yet corroborating evidence or reason to believe it’s true – now there may be. Based on potentially reliable information, Southwest may focus on Denver to open their Hawaii route aspirations.
If you are considering booking travel or signing up for a new credit card please click here. Both support LiveAndLetsFly.com.
If you haven’t followed us on Facebook or Instagram, add us today.
What I Heard
On a beach in Kona, for a hotel review I have not yet written, a casual conversation with a Southwest employee took place. At the time I looked up his name and his position matched his claims. We were discussing Hawaii and how much my family was enjoying the trip and how we flew American in economy and were displeased. I’ve already discussed my intention to leave American, but it was the failure to use instruments to upgrade when it counted the most that put the final nails in the coffin.
He asked why I didn’t move my business to Southwest, especially given their rapid expansion into Latin America and the Caribbean. While I love the Companion Pass, and we used it to go to Aruba and Jamaica among others – Southwest simply doesn’t cover enough of the destinations we like to visit further afield including destinations like Hawaii.
He then stated that Hawaii was in the cards, but they just couldn’t get the airplanes. They had been waiting on 737-MAX aircraft but nothing had the legs to get to the islands. I added that plenty of other carriers are flying on 737s without the MAX variant from Vegas, California, Washington, and Oregon. He stated that Southwest was looking for “longer legs” and that there was renewed interest in Denver without directly stating:
“Southwest wants to fly Denver to Hawaii”
I asked some probing questions going a bit further but this was more or less the limitation of what he was willing to share. It was a foregone conclusion for him that when Southwest had the aircraft, they would start their Hawaii flights from Denver.
Reasonable Suspicion
Speculation about their recent appearance at a Hawaii tourism event reinforced the swirling waters of suspicion that Southwest was ready for their big push.
That event came and went without such an announcement to the disappointment of many.
United has taken comments made by Southwest executives to the next level by flooding their current markets with seats to the islands. Fares from the west coast, once a deal at $300-ish appears to now be obtainable nearly on demand. United clearly intends to snuff Southwest out before the get the chance to even announce their intentions.
But most of those increases in frequency come from west coast cities and those don’t make any sense anyway? Here are a few reasons why.
- Competition is brutal from the saturated west coast. United, American, Delta and Hawaiian fly the heavy equipment (among others) while Virgin America and Alaska actually fly more flights to the islands than any other carrier. From Denver, a Southwest hub, the carrier battles just United and flows tens of thousands of passengers through the Mile-High city every day already.
- The appearance of Southwest at the Hawaii tourism event suggests that flights could be imminent, which may or may not coincide with the recent acceptance of their first 737-MAX which just flew the original Texas circuit (DAL-HOU-SAT). Those events both took place last month with the first flight to come this week.
- The legs on the 737 MAX make the most use coming from a long-distance Southwest stronghold but you wouldn’t necessarily need them to fly from Phoenix, Vegas, or LAX – all Southwest “hubs”. East of those markets, the next largest hub for Southwest is Denver and beyond that, the 737-MAX wouldn’t make any other journeys possible from next closest hubs like Dallas Love, Houston Hobby, or Chicago Midway. In essence, Denver is the only city that required the MAX to make it work where a 737 could possibly fly to the islands.
- It’s not about beating United in Denver, but it wouldn’t break LUV’s heart if they did. United is busy fighting Frontier for the true home team airline of Denver title with a battle royale death match a la Alaska/Delta/Seattle. Frontier won’t challenge United for long haul flights – they don’t have the aircraft; but I bet the welcome the help.
When And Where Will They Launch?
The Southwest customer market has changed from the mid-90s when most of the country started to notice the discount carrier. At the time, their focus on the leisure market and “competing with driving” (to quote Herb Kelleher in Nuts!) and that would suggest that Hawaii wasn’t just out of reach for their aircraft, but also their customers.
But that has changed! The carrier’s simple approach to aircraft type, boarding, status, and point accrual and redemption have won over a wary bunch of consultants. These road warriors travel to mid-level markets every week that have grown tired of regional jets and would gladly exchange a shot at first class roulette in favor of an exit-row seat, pleasant service and direct flights. Now that Southwest charges the same or more than the competition 65% of the time, it’s the lack of ancillary charges, and reputation of friendly service that has built a loyal following.
Looking at Hawaiian airports and Southwest’s market, Honolulu or Kona are the obvious choices. Hilo is more or less a volume addition for the Big Island of Hawaii (Kona handles more of the traffic and is closer to resorts). Honolulu has arguably the most affordable hotels and is most touristy of the islands.
Looking at Denver, it has the least amount of competition for Southwest within range of a 737-MAX. United does put a heavy-configuration 777-200 on the Honolulu route, but the rest (Kona, Lihue, Maui) will use 757s which will have a few seats more than Southwest’s MAX. No one else runs any of the routes and United has only recently increased to 40 (YES 40) daily flights to Hawaii to potentially shut out Southwest’s entrance to the islands.
The Los Angeles market is saturated. United alone already flies five dailies just to Honolulu but just increased every single flight to at least daily which includes Hilo, now two daily flights to Lihue and Kona, and three times daily to Maui. Consider Maui from LAX, which welcomes two Delta flights, four American flights, one Hawaiian Airlines, one Virgin America in addition to the three aforementioned United daily flights. Why would Southwest want to start flying from there?
Phoenix is a little less crowded but still sees heavy competition from American (twice daily to Honolulu, Maui, and Lihue, once daily to Kona) but adds a wide-body 767-300 from Hawaiian. There is also a lot less feeder activity to Phoenix for Southwest than to Denver. Las Vegas is more of an end point for Southwest than a connection city and there the carrier would also face competition from Allegiant s well as Hawaiian.
Denver is the statement city. Flying from the mile-high city uses the long-range capabilities that Southwest has been waiting for with the 737-MAX. Starting service from Denver International sends a message to United that they can compete and won’t be scared off by increases in volume. Kona seems most likely as Honolulu is saturated from everywhere, and Southwest has no desire to compete with a 777-200 and an airline not afraid to lose some money to save some face. Lastly, it makes sound business sense for the carrier who will likely steal some O&D traffic but also connect a large volume of passengers east of Denver who are already paying a premium to get to the islands.
I think they will capture a lot of faithful Southwest customers that have long-awaited their entry into the market but now that they have some points and an option to get there with Southwest, might consider Hawaii over the Caribbean destinations Southwest flies.
What do you think? Was my source just guessing or hoping? Do you think Southwest will start flights to Hawaii from Denver?
I think what is missing is more than one 737 max. It would not be wise to launch a route where you only have one capable airplane. Mechanical delays, irops, crew limits, etc. Seem like they would come into play. Once they have more i can see this as more likely.
They do have more, they were just kind of waiting for the manufacturing spigot to be turned on.
Can someone tell me if they have already flown the 7:30 Max United Airlines is the airline in question I flew to Hawaii a few weeks ago I know it was a 737 but I don’t know if it was the max
They have 9 already and will have 14 by the end of 17’. Will a couple hundred more coming.
I don’t believe those have really been through their paces and are through the system. Just like other airlines accepting new equipment into the system, the airline typically runs odd routes to get their crew and personnel experienced with the new type. While this is just a variant, I linked to a post by Sriram at Travel Codex that outlined one such run for their first aircraft which took place just recently.
The Big island typically has less tourism than Maui etc. It will be a little sad if that changed. Not a huge Maui fan with the traffic jams and back to back resorts. Prices from SFO to Kona direct are not that low. UA is only direct option and still charges $800. You can go across the bay and fly Alaska but that’s inconvenient for some.
For those that do not live in a mega-market like San Francisco, this seems like a no brainer. The fact that Bay Area travelers can save money while still getting a direct flight by switching airports blows this Pittsburgher’s mind. The thought that one wouldn’t want to switch airports out of convenience reflects how good Bay Area (and other co-terminal markets) really have it. Despite PIT being a decent-sized market, connections are a part of life or ULCCs are. For example, Los Angeles (which Delta, American, and United all claim laughably as a hub) has direct flights to Pittsburgh that were recently added back by Southwest and Spirit after American dropped their single A319 daily.
I agree that I hope Kona does not get overrun with tourism, but I think United would be more to blame than Southwest given the volume of traffic (and subsequent price squeeze) added.
I am hoping for an Ontario flight. Can’t make it on just O&D but with continuing service to BNA/MDW/LIT?/MCI? etc and a subsidy from the airport authority I think it’s viable…
It could happen without a subsidy. I recently listened to the Cranky Flyer’s podcast and he had Southwest’s Revenue Manager on to talk about California where he specifically discussed the booking preferences from California passengers. Because Southwest holds the booking experience solely within their purview (no third-party bookings) they can see the passenger’s information (where they live) and the searches they run (a little creepy but it makes sense) and they can determine when a customer is willing to move to another LA area airport and when they are not. Specifically, the manager stated that in the Bay Area most Oakland passengers and SFO passengers will purchase from either airport but that San Jose is nearly a separate market by itself. I think they will find that some passengers will fly with Southwest from ONT that might pursue another airline from LAX proper, but I doubt that they will find customers willing to pay $800 instead of $400 to avoid the drive to and from LAX. Then again, though I am not a California resident I have made that drive and I can say that I really wouldn’t blame them…
Thanks for the link. One thing to bear in mind is that WN also has 30 737-MAX 7s on order, which have about 325 extra miles of range. A MAX 7 can reach KOA from DAL and AUS, though just barely. I suspect you probably are right about DEN, though I wouldn’t rule out a delay until 2019 and a launch from AUS on the MAX 7 instead (DAL seems unlikely given the gate situation). They’d have a virtually competition-free route, and yes, I know several Southwest loyalists who would gladly take the extra connection in AUS just to fly Southwest.
I think Austin makes a lot of sense from a business perspective for O&D but for many cities you’d have a double connection. That’s not a problem for award flyers but will not be nearly competitive enough to battle single connections on airlines already slugging it out in a blood-match like United has already started. I also don’t know how closely they will want to cut the distance limitations, 325 miles isn’t much when you factor in winter headwinds westbound which would presumably be the busier season. But I think Southwest could really make an impact when flying from Austin, Denver, San Diego or Long Beach. I think there could be some interesting additional options in airports like MCI (Kansas City) which might be on the periphery of that range for once-weekly flights in a market where they hold 50% of all traffic, STL if the legs are there (or perhaps in the summer when winds are calmer) would be welcome I am sure.
Should have waited for another year to write the story.
Well maybe there is more to tell…
Why not fly from San Diego to Hawaii……. especially with the military
I agree and I think that market will work well for them (I addressed such in another comment thread though not in the body of the post) – but they wouldn’t have needed to wait for a MAX for that which is what leads me to believe that they want to start from further afield. They also do not have any hub traffic through SAN like they would in LAX, PHX, DEN, etc.
I’m skeptical of the claim that they did not need the MAX to go from SAN, or that SAN would not be a good place to start. The issue with southwest’s aircraft is that they are all single class configuration. Their jets carry more people than the same variants deployed by other airlines. There are approximately 20 additional seats compared to the competition. That is where the aircraft, when full, becomes too heavy to travel that distance within its fuel limitations. So it’s not necessarily true that they have always had the plane to do it. Sure, maybe their -700’s can do it…after 15 people are dragged off their aircraft by law enforcement every time. I also think San Diego would be a good jumping off point – They have feeder traffic into SAN from every major west coast airport and long hauls from the east. It is a busier focus city than it gets credit for, in terms of SWA traffic. They operate 8 of the 10 busiest routes in and out of SAN, and they have almost triple the market share of the next busiest airline operating there. They may not ultimately want to start there, but they have the infrastructure in place to do it if they wanted to.
I think you could have a point regarding O&D traffic from San Diego to the islands, but I am going to disagree on the connecting traffic and I think that is a big part of this. Connecting flights don’t really make sense because Southwest usually assigns a cost to them. For example, Delta might be more competitive San Diego to New York City if they are connecting you in Atlanta because they want to be competitive over the direct flights. Southwest seems to add that cost in to the fare. Connecting passengers from across California will make it tough to remain competitive, especially when they are competing with direct flights from virtually every west coast airport. I can’t imagine Alaska is going to want to lose marketshare to Southwest and United (with their new onslaught of available seats) when they can offer a cheaper direct option from a home airport. Southwest would have to launch dramatically cheaper to capture customers from the Bay area for example taking a connection to San Diego and I doubt they will want to do that.
It will be fun to watch Southwest battle it out for market share to Hawaii from the west coast. They will be in head to head competition with airlines who serve food, have seat assignments, and a choice of three different classes of service. Southwest has the 2 free bags advantage, but I don’t see that as the deciding factor for most people. Many passengers today have airline loyalty credit cards which allow for free bags, discounted upgrades, and admittance into their lounges, plus other perks. Another issue for Southwest will be availability of reward seats to Hawaii. Their loyal customers will not be happy if they can only get reward seats 6 months out. On the other hand if Southwest doesn’t limit reward seats, then they will not make money on this venture as reward seats to Hawaii will be in high demand and they don’t have enough flight to spread out the reward flyers. Finally, Hawaii is the second most expensive place to operate an airline in the United States. Southwest has opened not one location, but four in Hawaii. Their unions do not allow them to contract work out. That means that many of their most senior pilots, flight attendants, station agents, mechanics, and management will be transfering there. Some other airline employees get up to a 15% premium on their salary if they are stationed in Hawaii. Their startup costs have to be absolutely staggering. I see a lot of headwinds that Southwest will have to fly through to make this work in their business model. 5% of their 6% planned growth for 2019 is being used for their new Hawaii service. They could surprise me and everyone else, and it wouldn’t be the first time. They have created a nice nitch for themselves. But Hawaii is such a different animal.