A Southwest Airlines jet was forced to make an emergency landing at an Oakland International Airport after its landing gear collapsed.A spokesperson for the airline said the nose landing gear on the 737 malfunctioned forcing the plane to land on its belly.
Luckily, no passengers or crew were injured.
source: WHDH
Southwest Airlines Co. has signed a 10-year contract to sell tickets through the Galileo distribution service to win more business travelers.
The agreement, Southwest’s second with a ticketing company, will be “‘a significant revenue growth opportunity,'” Chief Executive Gary Kelly said Wednesday at the airline’s annual meeting.
Kelly is betting that wider availability of tickets will lure more corporate travel accounts, bolstering Southwest’s bid to add revenue while limiting fare increases. Jet fuel and labor costs rose 59 percent and 9.7 percent, respectively, in 2006.
source: Chicago Tribune
Southwest Airlines Co., the nation’s largest low-fare carrier, announced Friday it will begin service at San Francisco International Airport in August with 18 flights and cut-rate introductory fares on its initial departures to San Diego, Las Vegas and Chicago.
The 18 nonstop departures starting Aug. 26 represent the airline’s largest initial new-city schedule in its history, and beats its announcement in February to resume SFO service this fall with 14 flights. Southwest will resume SFO flights six years after it pulled out of the airport because of high costs, flight delays and restraints on growth.
“‘We’ve been longing to return to San Francisco,'” said Gary Kelly, Southwest’s chief executive. “‘We beat our promise of coming back in the fall.'”
fuente: insidebayarea.com
The chief executive of Southwest Airlines Co. today said there is “‘growing evidence'” a slowing U.S. economy is dampening on travel demand, which will make it tough for the discount carrier to achieve its earnings target for the year.
Speaking at the Bear Stearns Global Transportation Conference, Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said the long-standing 15 percent earnings-growth target remains in place for this year. He added, however, the Dallas-based company may be forced to reevaluate targets for 2008 and beyond if the market continues to be sluggish.
source: Daily southtown
A new study from the University of California, Irvine suggests that it might pay to shop around before booking that Southwest ticket. The report concludes that last-minute airfares are more expensive on Southwest, on average, than on other airlines when consumers use online searches such as Orbitz or Travelocity.
The study’s author says his conclusions deflate the long-standing belief that Southwest, the dominant airline at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, is always the low-fare leader on last-minute flights.
source: Baltimore Sun
Southwest Airlines Co., the low- fare carrier famed for no-frills service, may add wireless Internet connections to its planes to attract more business fliers.
Southwest will seek proposals within a few weeks to outfit several jets to serve as prototypes, Chief Executive Officer Gary Kelly said today in an interview. With such a system, passengers would have Internet access in flight, e-mail and “‘potentially delivery of entertainment services,'” Kelly said.
“‘We are very seriously exploring that,'” Kelly said. “‘We’d be acutely interested in the cost of doing that. It would be a very exciting development if we could make that work.'” Southwest is studying the idea as part of a broader review of ways to generate revenue apart from ticket sales. The Dallas- based airline offers only peanuts and other snacks and drinks on its flights so it can stay profitable at lower fares.
source: Denver Post
The Dallas-based, low-cost airlines said it is adding an additional nonstop, daily flight between Dallas and Albuquerque, making a total of eight; and a flight between Dallas and New Orleans, for a total of five.
source: bizjournals.com
The Dallas-based low-cost carrier said it flew 6.1 billion revenue passenger miles last month compared to March 2006 when the airline flew 5.8 billion revenue passenger miles. A revenue passenger mile is one paying passenger flown 1 mile.
Load factor, however, dropped in March as its percentage of seats filled slipped to 73.3 percent from 75.5 percent a year ago.
Southwest’s expansion comes just a week after another low-fare carrier, JetBlue Airways, announced it was temporarily reducing its number of flights out of Pittsburgh and needed customers to fill more seats on flights from here to Boston and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Low-fare carriers have had mixed results in the Pittsburgh market. Since 2000, eight have launched service here, but only four remain. The remaining carriers have been able to bring down average fares, though, helping Pittsburgh become the nation’s 13th-cheapest midsize airport.
source: Times online
Southwest Airlines Co. on Monday said January traffic rose 8.8 percent on expanded capacity on its flights.
Traffic rose to 5.18 billion revenue passenger miles from 4.76 billion a year ago. A revenue passenger mile is equal to one paying passenger flown one mile.
Capacity during the month increased to 8.12 billion available seat miles, up 8.2 percent to 7.51 billion in the same month last year. Load factor, or occupancy, rose slightly to 63.8 percent from 63.4 percent.
source: Business Week
