DATA SPOTLIGHT: Southwest Airlines

15 June, 2020

This year The Blue Swan Daily will feature some of the leading airlines, airports and country markets for air travel. Here, using the extensive profile insights available to CAPA - Centre for Aviation members to deliver a data snapshot, we look at Southwest Airlines, which over the past two weeks has become the world's largest airline by seat capacity, based on filed OAG flight schedules.

It is a dangerous exercise to predict airline survivors of the Covid-19 crisis, but with approximately 20 months of liquidity, Southwest Airlines is in better position than many other operators and currently sits on top of the world in terms of filed capacity.

The airline's lower exposure to business travellers and solid unencumbered asset base are other tools in its war chest for navigating the Covid-19 crisis. And although demand is still extremely depressed, Southwest is detecting some improvement off low bases in Jun-2020. It appears that the bottoming-out of US demand occurred in Apr-2020, and it and some US ULCCs and LCCs are particularly bullish that their respective models are better suited for taking advantage of a fully fledged recovery in demand, once that occurs.

Previously, Southwest executives have explained that the airline was attempting to maintain as many itineraries as possible, and overall, CEO Gary Kelly said that while on the surface it may seem like the company is deploying too much capacity, it is "still cash positive…even though it may not be enough cash to cover overhead". He reasoned that it is better to operate a flight and use the aircraft, as opposed to "just letting it sit there on the ground".

But this strategy has meant that the airline has been cancelling a number of flights which means the schedules do not necessarily match what is actually being operated.

ABOUT
Established in 1971, Southwest Airlines is a US low-cost carrier headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The carrier operates passenger and freight services with a fleet of Boeing 737 aircraft on more than 3500 flights per day across the Americas. Southwest Airlines completed the acquisition of AirTran Airways in May-2011, and merged with Southwest in 2014 under a single AOC.

GLOBAL RANKING (as at 15-Jun-2020)

NETWORK MAP (as at 15-Jun-2020)

DESTINATIONS (as at 15-Jun-2020)

ANNUAL PASSENGER TRAFFIC (2011 - 2020YTD)

CAPACITY SNAPSHOT (versus same week last year)

ANNUAL CAPACITY (2012-2020*)(NOTE:The values for this year are at least partly predictive up to 6 months and may be subject to change)

WEEKLY DOMESTIC CAPACITY (2017 - 2020*)(NOTE:The values for this year are at least partly predictive up to 6 months and may be subject to change)

WEEKLY INTERNATIONAL CAPACITY (2017 - 2020*)(NOTE:The values for this year are at least partly predictive up to 6 months and may be subject to change)

CAPACITY SPLIT BETWEEN DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL OPERATIONS (w/c 15-Jun-2020)

LARGEST NETWORK POINT (w/c 15-Jun-2020)

BUSIEST DOMESTIC ROUTES BY CAPACITY (w/c 15-Jun-2020)

LARGEST INTERNATIONAL MARKETS BY COUNTRY (w/c 15-Jun-2020)

BUSIEST INTERNATIONAL ROUTES BY CAPACITY (w/c 15-Jun-2020)

DEPARTING SYSTEM SEATS BY CLASS (w/c 15-Jun-2020)

AVERAGE FLIGHT LENGTH (w/c 15-Jun-2020)

FLEET SUMMARY (as at 15-Jun-2020)

AVERAGE FLEET AGE (as at 15-Jun-2020)

MORE INSIGHT...

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China, US lead domestic airline regrowth. In Europe, it's LCCs

COVID-19: Southwest Airlines: nuanced crisis management

COVID 19: US airlines get aid, ground older aircraft. What now?

Southwest Airlines: Hawaii services continue to beat expectations