Southwest Airlines Update
Southwest Airlines EVP and chief revenue officer Andrew Watterson discusses the timing of service to Hawaii and potential codeshares as well as the service profile of the Boeing 737 MAX-8.
Transcript
Andrew Watterson:Well, we're going through the FAA ETOPS authorization process right now, and so that will take us through the bulk of this year. So we've promised it will be open for sale by the end of the year, but we're not sure when the first flight will be. It'll be dependent upon the FAA process, so we don't want to get ahead of the FAA on that. Whether that's end of this year, beginning of next year, it really depends on that process. So our MAX aircraft will give us a lot more range. We first intend to use it in Hawaii, and that'll keep us busy, you know, into this year through 2019. And as we kind of finish that up, then we'll be looking further south. So we've opened up a lot of more near-international routes over the last 4 years, and the deeper will be after Hawaii. They interest us. Which ones will be a function of the market timing at that point. Codeshares of interest to us in our collective bargaining agreement with our clients, the scope clause it's called, allows us to have limited interlining codeshare relationships. Those we see to be beneficial. They're not as pressing as some of the other opportunities we have, so they're a bit behind other things in our technology pipeline, but we will be there one day, whether that's 1 year from now, 2 years, or 3 years, who could say? But it's, it's on the list. Thank you.
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