Southwest Airlines Community

You're pretty lame for abandoning your blog entries so quickly and always avoiding any criticism that can't be answered with the company line as if you are always right. ... View more

Clearly unless you are the headquarters city for an airline you can't depend on service that they offer you whether you fill their planes or not. Surprised that you haven't responded to this particular post more than you have and included the details like you usually do. What's up with that? ... View more

Paula and Gary Kelly- When will we hear answers to things like what will happen to F9 employees, Lynx, and the In-flight entertainment and dining?? All the big questions still remain unanswered even though you've submitted your bid. Did the bid not address it? Do you guys still not know yourselves or are you just not telling us? Also, the audio on the clip, not through your own fault I'm sure, is really choppy so I just thought I'd let you know. I'd also like to know why people from F9 are receiving such high reprimand on here while nobody is acknowledging the fact that there is a fair amount of rudeness that keeps popping up from your people as well. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, lets hear what is in it for the human beings that work at and travel on Frontier everyday right now, the other cities SW serves outside Denver, and not just what's in it for SW and your current local Denver SW passengers. That'd be really nice and shouldn't be hard if the overall bid is really as great and fantastic as you keep saying it is. Thanks and best regards. ... View more

We don't want some of those "passionate" employees over here at Southwest who have been constantly bashing us in the blogs over the past two weeks. That would just ruin the culture over here. We want people who actually want to become Southwest employees rather than considering themselves as Former Frontier employees. Anonymous — Mon, 08/10/2009 - 14:00 ------------------------------------------------------------ People like you ruin your culture. You folks have had some major two year old tantrums of your own on here by the way. Exhibit A: CODESHARING. Don't even start with that that holier than thou attitude because you don't live up. ... View more

Yea. Your best interest and nobody else's. I hope you fail miserably with the Frontier purchase and continue to fail miserably in Denver. ... View more

OK. You're censoring the blog now. I posted several links to news stories talking about Frontier's rally in Denver last week and you didn't post them. That's really pathetic. ... View more

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/item.aspx?type=blog&ak=68496411.blog Great article for Frontier! ... View more

Paula- Any chance there could be a special 737 that you paint all of the animals on so that they could be preserved sort of like how US Airways has done for PSA and the smiley face? ... View more

Why not a Muse Air type merger like where the airline remained a stand alone subsidiary indefinitely as opposed to a Morris Air type where it was completely absorbed and that particular brand eliminated? What about the former experience made you all decide to take the latter approach for future purchases, especially when the product being purchased is so radically different from what you already have? Will you keep Frontier's seat-back entertainment and food options and integrate those into SW like Airtran proposed doing with Midwest's cookies? Just curious. ... View more

To "confused about the process" – I know this doesn’t answer all of your questions, but it is my understanding that the two companies will be the only bidders. The bidders can submit binding proposals for Frontier's assets, either in part or as a whole - it's up to the bidder to determine what assets they want to submit a bid for. If there is more than one qualified bidder, an auction will be held beginning August 11, 2009, during which the debtors will determine, in consultation with the Unsecured Creditors Committee, which bid to accept and present to the bankruptcy court for approval. My understanding is an auction will be help beginning Aug. 11, 2009, to be complete by Aug. 17, 2009. Paula Berg — Wed, 08/05/2009 - 19:37 ----------------------------------------------------- Thanks. Although I did not ask these questions, it has greatly enhanced my understanding of what is going on and I appreciate you taking the time to find this stuff out and tell us 🙂 ... View more

Paula or Brian- If you don't mind me asking, why did you folks make this announcement about Frontier before you had your plans completely finalized and could accurately convey to us just what exactly it is that you are doing/hope to do? It seems that you simply put needless concern and stress in the lives of the Frontier Employees and Customers(as well as some of your own probably) by doing it prematurely like you did. About half of the issues you're having on here probably could have been avoided if Southwest had fully thought this through first and then announced a fully baked idea rather than one that's still in progress. That is not a personal attack, but just a genuine question and if you wouldn't mind speaking to it I'd really appreciate it. Thanks. ... View more

Lets put it this way. Why would an airline buy another. It's simple really. Frontier for the last five quarters made money where as Southwest lost money, so if Southwest takes Frontier out of business. It just means their scared and don't know how to compete with such a kick *ss airline. F9 rules WN drools. so gggoooooooooo Republic. LOL Anonymous — Sun, 08/02/2009 - 18:03 ------------------------------------- That's what I'm talking about 🙂 ... View more

Me thinks BN was a former disgruntled legacy employee who lost their job due to WN expansion at BN. Face it WN just does it better than the legacies. F9 is but a small speed bump so you'd better get used to it as the legacies slowly die off. Just like the dinosaurs which is what they are. WN RULES!!! BTW just flew WN to/from BN & loved it as always. Poor poor AA. How pathetic they've become at BN. Anonymous — Sun, 08/02/2009 - 18:08 -------------------------------------------------- First of all, I am a Nashville resident and customer and have never worked a day in the airline industry in my life. Second, its BNA and not BN(about as dumb as starting your post with "me thinks" ). Third, Frontier is another discounter who just happens to have better service and not a legacy. Fourth, American Airlines still has the other half of Concourse C, an Admirals Club, and flights to Miami, Washington, DC, Boston, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas, and Los Angeles that provide connections to the Northeast, Midwest, West, Canada, the Carribean, Latin America, Europe and Asia. The only place that we can't get to conveinantly with them still is the rest of Florida which if you go back and remember that they used to be a partner with US Airways per this(http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1998/04/24/archive/main7924.shtml?tag=contentMain;contentBody) and fly them to fill in that hole is not then a problem. London aside which we have easy connections to, we have just as much service as RDU which is still a focus city/hub for Eagle as noted here(http://www.aa.com/aa/i18nForward.do?p=/footer/eagleOverview.jsp). American and US also have TV screens and digital gate podiums respectively as well as more comfortable seating which is actually secured to the ground unlike a few rows at some SW gates that have been added out on the tile and rock because they aren't secured. Clearly you don't get out much or have a really low standard. ... View more

http://www.frontierairlines.com/frontier/video/15year_hi.html Deserves a second posting ... View more

Gotta LUV this one. Anonymous said, "It sounds like a bunch of 3rd graders fighting over the green play dough." Wow, talk about hitting the nail on the head! That is the truth people. Bless you Paula for having the patience and fortitude to try to educate some of these people on their erroneous information. I would never in a million years be able to do your job! Speculate all day but the fact remains not one of you knows what will will happen or what the next move will be at Southwes Airlinest. Sheesh! What a bunch of cry babies. By the way, chicken little says the sky is fallin also. Southwest Airlines Management will do what management needs to do. Period. Shame on the whining Frontier employees. I am embarrassed for each of you. Your airlines management team put you where you are today, so don't point fingers and blame Southwest for your problems. Don't forget when you point at Southwest and blame them, there are 3 fingers pointing back at YOU! It's just too bad that most of you are afraid to sign your comments so we would know who NOT to invite to join the Southwest Team. Been here for the Trans Star acquisition, the Morris acquisition, the Midway acquisition and the American Trans Air acquisition. Will be here for the Frontier acquisition also! GO Southwest! swflyer — Sat, 08/01/2009 - 21:46 ---------------------------------------------- Yea...that is the pot calling the kettle black! ;-D Remember the code-sharing blogs where the SW employees whined like constipated two year olds for days...LOL. You'd be just as frustrated if it were someone like Airtran buying you out and saying they intended to sell off your planes before it was all over with. ... View more

"everuyone" and "bancrupsy" doesn't exactly qualify you to be here speaking with any kind real authority does it?? ... View more

You all aren't being good hosts so far by not understanding that they are in fact a viable airline(through your own ignorance only) and are frustrated by the fact that you want to take a product that they've worked so hard to create and just eliminate it for market share along with a nice size share of them. Their good airline and good customer experience will continue as long as we are allowed to exist. And if you're going to criticize then at least used good spelling. Haha. ... View more

Republic's regional payrates for mainline employees sounds like a great win for Frontier especially since Southwest's employees are some of the best paid in the industry. Also, I believe the fact that the Frontier brand has received bids should be exciting for the employees of an unprofitable company that could simply shut down. All airlines (even Southwest) are for profit companies in a capitalist economy. If you are a stockholder who wants to get a return on investment from any solution with Frontier, does that make you as "greedy" and "money hungry" as Southwest? Anonymous — Sun, 08/02/2009 - 08:34 --------------------------------------------- It's NOT UNPROFITABLE ANYMORE!!!!!! ... View more

Let me also add to the first of the two posts that I just made that it gives me great pleasure to know that my potential alternative to you Continental, kicked YOUR tail in Houston when you tried to run Muse. I'll enjoy them all the more with that knowledge as well as the fact that they are the one airline who has never stopped competing with you at Love Field. ... View more

L Moody or the Anonymous who reposted what they said....Frontier has restructured in Banruptcy so they are not the same as what brought them in, they now make money, and if the economy was not such that they can't get exit financing right now then they would not have be bought by anyone and Republic was/IS a perfect remedy to that problem. All one has to is go back and look at their old news releases and website to see that they've done the neccessary restructuring. ... View more

lewmoore- That's inaccurate. First, the AA hub started at the old terminal right before the move where they replaced the rose garden with an extra finger of gates and ran a bus to a remote tarmac expansion that housed the Eagle planes. SW had wanted to come in and start a large north south presence in the city also at that time but before Herb could meet with Mayor Fulton, AA beat them to the punch and Herb didn't believe Nashville could support that kind of presence from them both. Then fast forward to 1995 when AA had shut their San Jose and Raleigh hubs and were saying they "had every intention of making the Nashville hub work" at reduced size of about 50 mainline flights a day + a decent size Eagle operation. That is when Southwest started growing and competing with them in such a way that they could no longer charge the fares that they needed to keep it going as originally planned and it finally had to shut down as they couldn't compete. Southwest surpassed them in flights as AA made their last cuts in mainline service to make us a spoke and withing a year were at 50 serving roughly the same routes minus London and Toronto. A great example of the competition was when AA decided to keep LA as a route right after closing the hub and SW immediately started flying it more often with bulletin boards around the airport next to AA's saying "LAX ASAP". Eagle closed their half of their hub in '96 citing the fact they no longer had mainline flights to connect people to. SW cont. to exp. to 89 flights a day (without many of the perks of a full service airline) driving the other legacy airlines to have to switch to RJ's in large part and once they did that they started acting like we weren't really worthy of that big of a presence and they were doing us a favor while making BWI their major north south airport and starting to cut service here, 89 to 87 to 85 to 80 with Islip, Manchester, PBI, Seattle, and Oakland dispearing and regular frequency cuts occuring on most other service with has so far outpaced any additions with us no longer being an opening market for any of their new cities but rather someone who has to connect in a place like BWI or MDW or DEN. Now they are going and getting rid of our only other low cost competitor in Nashville, Frontier, thus condemning us to their crappy cattle call and no frills service from a better airline all over again. Go ahead and try to prove me wrong but all one has to do is search the Google News archives, Airport history books on sale in Nashville, and other airline forums with first hand accounts on the situation to see that I'm right. That is why I am so PO'd right now. They do just enough to keep everyone else out of here in a meaningful way without taking the market seriously(we're underserved compared to Charlotte, Memphis, RDU, STL, IND, TPA and MKE who are the same size believe it or not) and force us to have to deal with amenities and seating policies that are only better than Spirit rather than taking a hint and adding assigned seating(where we reserve our seats at reservation time like any other airline-not the way they tested it where they randomly assign seats splitting up some groups at the ticket counter like they tested which of course people wouldn't like) or some IFE like all of their other low cost competitors who by the way do a much better job giving their markets what they deserve and growing without all kinds of stupid little rules and idiocies than SW does which has made them one of the most restricted carriers of the pack. Southwest hasn't even taken the time finish upgrading their frickin gates in Nashville with the new design that they announced several years ago yet. At least half the gates still don't have the new plug and cupholder chairs and initially they didn't even put in the electronic display things for the new boarding but instead just brought in metal poles that they'd turn each time the boarding group changed. None of the gates have digital diplays to give the regular flight information still. All placards with 80 flights a day no matter that we renovated the place and everyone else has digital now(all other SW stations our size do). I've also had agents at the ticket counter tell me how we're only a real airport pass. wise when big events happen and stuff like they're doing us favor giving us a presence this large but otherwise its slow which pisses me off becaue our airport serves a trade area of 3 million and we have 9 million passengers a year O&D now which is how many we had O&D and connecting at the height of the AA hub not to mention that we've grown a bloody lot and now have Nissan North America, Oreck, LP, and whole bunch of other people headquarted here. Doesn't that annoy you ANY? What do you guys at Southwest have to say to that? Oh and lewmoore-we still have half of one side of the C concourse deserted and SW shares it with Air Canada, Midwest, and American so they didn't exactly come back in restore it to its former glory and had we not renovated it ourselves they wouldn't have done jack like they have in BWI, MCO, MDW, or TPA which are clearly more important to them. So yea,...do this and I'm going back to flying only AA and their former frequent flyer partner US Airways to fill in the holes like Florida. Your peer the down the interstate in Houston, Continental is looking better every day too as is a Republic owned Midwest, RJ service only on the first leg from Nashville or not. ... View more

If anyone had any doubt that this is an open forum, they'd only need to read the last few posts to know. I've stopped participating in some Yahoo forums because I got tired of people posting rude, inaccurate, flaming comments from the anonymity of their keyboards. NOTHING in anything that's currently out, from the press release, to the press conference, to Paula's attempts to deal with the screaming hordes here IN ANY WAY backs up a "General Sherman/Atlanta" type burning down of Frontier. Spending over $100M to just "get rid of the competition" is the stupid financial planning, and if true, would be reflected in our stock price on Wall Street. Oh yeah, our stock's up since the announcement. And if you think a commuter carrier is going to support wage rates and benefits that a currently in place..........REALLY?? All airlines are businesses!!! Frankly, I wish there were some filters on this site, because I'm tired of reading the screaming tripe posted by people with their hair on fire. Just my opinion. Will — Sat, 08/01/2009 - 07:27 ---------------------------------------------------------- You're quite rude. I hope that whatever you do for SW doesn't involve Customer Service or working at one your stations because that would be some crappy service if it were the case. If you don't want to hear what your customers have to say or give a rats behind about what Frontier's customers and employees(who have every right to like their airline and want it stand alone just like you do-pride in a company other than yours isn't a sin) then take your blog down or don't ask for it by making a post soliciting it. It's hilarious that you say that you don't accept email because you want that "personal touch" and professional atmosphere with names and addresses that you get with a letter but then at the same time you do this. Also, if you don't think that getting rid of Frontier's assets and product features and replacing it with yours without absorbing or keeping any part of it around sans gates and routes like you bought from dead ATA(which is the suggested intention in the interview above) spending 100 million+ to scrub a competitor then I'd love to hear what you do call it. And of course that would drive your shares up because its growth and the death of someone whose been eating into your profit so ultimately it would mean more money for you and them. What a screwed up company you've become. And yea that may all seem rude too...BUT YOU ASKED FOR IT. ... View more

You get it but you don't care. You have totally soiled your reputation with me by making a move like this and even more so by the way your handling it by basically saying out the sides of your mouth that you are going to screw the airline without even being up front or honest about and playing dumb with us like you think we're asking if your form of seating and in flight experience will remain in tact rather than Frontier's with the seat back TV like we are really inquiring about(If we wanted your open seating than we wouldn't fly with Frontier who assigns them when presented with the option). And I'd much rather have their new planes than your junk that pops football sized holes in flight and is going start being sent to Central America for maintenance. Don't expect to capture Frontier's customers by buying our airline. We'll just bypass you and go to United. ... View more

AGAIN, WHEN WILL SOUTHWEST EFFECT COME TO ANCHORAGE, ALASKA? BROKEBYALASKAAIR — Fri, 07/31/2009 - 19:30 ----------------------------------------------------------------- You don't want this. They're like a parasite. They come in and kill off your present airline and replace them with one that has half the amenities and then shrink back down once they have a stranglehold on you to a size that is just big enough to keep everyone else out but give you a major headache. Look at Nashville and American Airlines and the fact that they are now in the process of the killing off our only other low cost alternative. ... View more

Keep in mind that people in the east use F9 to fly all over the west and vice-versa as well so it is not all about Denver. The rest of the country uses this airline as well and in some cities it is the only low cost alternative to you. How do you better competition in those cities by removing options and increasing your strong hold rather than the opposite which we know in the long run allows you have higher fares and ultimately make things less competitive? Also, why is it that AirTran would have taken on Midwest's cookies and signature service and you're not going to keep any of the distinctive amenities that Frontier has? I mean ultimately this is what you're saying: We want more market share in Denver, we will ultimately eliminate in its entirety the Frontier product in order to achieve that, we don't care about the impacts on markets outside Denver that will lose options, and more competition means more Southwest and less alternatives for consumers. ... View more

This(http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2009/07/30/southwest%E2%80%99s-bid-for-frontier-is-bad-news-for-united/) is a lousy approach for Southwest to take in the industry. What it fails to mention is that often times you do these things to drive the other airline out of the market and then shrink to leave that market with a far inferior level of service to what they had before. Fine if you want to compete but do so by attracting customers from your competitors with a superior product rather than ruining the competitors and their alternatives. ... View more

KEEP F9 MY F9! Anonymous — Thu, 07/30/2009 - 12:30 ---------------------------------------- Ditto ... View more

PLEASE don't do this unless you plan to take their amenities like assigned seating, seatback television and make that the new way at Southwest because, honestly, there is a reason that we choose Frontier over Southwest and Frontier customers would not be happy with anything less going forward. Also, you guys already have enough of a grip over Nashville which you have long since stopped growing for us but leave just big enough to keep most of the competition either out completely or limited to regional jets. We do not want anymore of this here. Either make Airtran and Jetblue come back in to take up the competitive slack or LEAVE OUR COMPETITIVE OPTION WITH BETTER AMENITIES WHICH HAS BEEN SAID TO BE THE LIKE "THE OLD WAY OF FLYING" ALONE!! I want Republic! ... View more

Just wanted to voice continued confusion with the Nashville cuts. First, East-West traffic is important here and but continuing to cut spokes on both sides over time you're hurting what is left(If you don't believe me go back and look at the Norfolk Airport website and their announcement about Nashville service which touted the western connections, how many people connect from places like Florida in Nashville to go Seattle, and traffic flow of the hub with American). Second, yea you can keep cutting frequencies but eventually you run out if you don't add enough back to keep pace and we WILL eventually lose more cities that way. Third, Nashville would be a perfect stopping place between Charlotte, Atlanta, Memphis, and Cincinnati if you would ever resume growth in the southeast. You're letting a lot of low hanging fruit(BUSINESS TRAVELERS) get away that way while Delta and US Airways thrive off of them. Fourth, Nashville needs a certain amount of connecting traffic and critical mass like its neighbors in Charlotte and Memphis(same population and geography) to truly reach its full potential and for some reason every big airline here has always stopped short of that and they wonder why we don't live up. Lastly, with all of the new businesses and jobs that we have attracted over the years and the fact that we now have as much traffic O&D here as we did with O&D and connecting combined with American, there is no reason why we can't sustain current service and support new at the same time. Not to mention that the planes are ALWAYS full when I fly you guys. Explain to me why this doesn't all make sense because I don't understand it and you're the expert here. ... View more

Definitely you should have a Nashville route...just don't make YX shelve theirs 😉 I'm thrilled that you're continuing to add new cities and make international deals. This is the most exciting year growth wise that I've seen in a long time and I think its terrific. It's been fun watching this airline grow up and fill the hole that AA left. Now you just need to add ATL, CLT, MEM, RIC, HSV, and CVG.... there's still a lot of growth and business travelers to be had in and around the southeast. ... View more