Let's be honest here. This is an amazing opportunity for Southwest to eliminate a competitor in a market they want to control. This is no different than what they did to ATA at MDW, no different than what American did to Reno Air. If you are feeling pricing pressure and your own low costs, aren't the lowest and you can't dictate market fares anymore - you find out ways to do it. Taking out Frontier is the easiest way to make it happen. The two products are totally different. Frontier provides a much superior product to its customers than Southwest has ever done, similar to the way JetBlue does. Frontier also typically, in markets I price, beats Southwest every day of the week in fares. Don't give me this "we are always bringing new low fares to cities"...stop drinking the kool-aid. There are MANY markets you can price out and Southwest is in the middle to higher level of fares...usually never near the bottom anymore. Yes on walk up fares they still hold pricing advantages, but they are NO WHERE near where they were of years past.
To sum it up, Paula can be here telling us how great this is for people and for new competition and lower fares - but it is just flat out lying. Don't take your customers and the customers of Frontier to be mindless morons who can't think and use common sense. This will eliminate competition, just as if AirTran or JetBlue make an offer, and it will likely end up resulting in job losses and and several cities to be cut that don't fit the Southwest route structure. Do we honestly believe they are going to keep flying to places like Akron-Canton when in WN's mind...they serve it just fine through Cleveland? Hardly. Then you just need to take a look at routes where F9 and WN overlap...and if you think they are going to take their flights, plus F9s and keep the same frequency...sorry try again.
If we want to keep fares low and offer more competition, the acquisition of F9 by WN should be rejected as it won't do those two things. This is just competition elimination and nothing more. Anything else being fed by the propaganda machine of the Southwest PR department is just them thinking the public is too stupid to use common sense and think for themselves.
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