[aredington]

In practice, Southwest airlines has one class of passenger. Everyone rides in steerage, but you can pay a little extra to jump at the front of the line and pick your favorite steerage class seat. They're able to operate profitably on a fairly consistent basis, this author is postulating a necessity that does not exist.

[rblatz]

And I personally hate flying Southwest and avoid it if at all possible. Not only have I on multiple occasions bought a cross country first class ticket from Delta for less than Southwest's Wanna Get Away fare, but I almost always find US Airways and Delta offer cheaper fares than them. Plus I don't have to deal with the frenzy rush of pick you own seat, I feel like it's a bunch of cattle being wrangled into a plane.

[skilesare]

I cannot comprehend this comment. I'v never seen a ticket for less on delta and the efficiency of boarding a SW flight blows anything away that I've seen on other carriers. Maybe this is a cross country issue. I usually fly shorter routes...I don't even know if southwest has flights that go cross country that don't have 3 or 4 stops....that might account for the higher price. For getting from Houston to New Orleans, there is no other way to go than LUV.

[rblatz]

I typically do PHX to CMH, but I've also tried CMH to SAN, PHX to SFO, and PXH to SJC. Maybe it's just the routes I fly, because I hear people talk about cheap flights on Southwest. I personally have not seen them in the past couple years.

[davewasthere]

Yeah, as long as the load factor is above 90%, the economy section of a plane pretty much covers the costs of a flight. Business and First Class are then almost purely profit. They could all be ID90s and still be profitable. (My information may be a few years out of date now... things _may_ have changed)

[dnautics]

those aren't long-haul flights.

[aestra]

What's a long haul flight? I can fly pretty much across the country on Southwest. Are we talking about transcontinental flights here?

[joeyo]

Historically Southwest used "point-to-point" routes heavily. Basically the plane would go A->B->C->D over the course of a day. These would be fairly short hops, maybe an hour or two typically, and passengers going all the way to D would stay on the aircraft during each brief stop. I don't think they have any nonstop across the continental US; you must make one (or more) stops.

This may have changed somewhat since the AirTran merger, but I haven't flown recently.

[dnautics]

the article specifically mentions 747s. 777s and 787s are regularly commuting trans-pacific these days; and have two- or three- tiered class seating; Presumably A340s and A380s, fit the bill as well.

I think long-haul flights more or less refer to flights that take longer than the ~11 hour flight crew shift.

Edit: apparently a long haul flight is any flight > 6h