Fare Wars
Southwest’s DIA Arrival Changes Local Flight Patterns
By Howard Rothman, 1-03-06
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Southwest Airlines has arrived at Denver International Airport, and from the amount of publicity this has generated in the local media you’d think it was the Second Coming. Actually, in a way I guess it is. Southwest served the area from old Stapleton International until 1986, when it pulled out complaining that local fees were too high. Things have changed in the intervening years, though, and the aggressively low-end airline with a weakened competition led by United Airlines for the hearts and wallets of Denver flyers. And as someone who logged more than 55,000 air miles in 2005, I welcome the competition.
Southwest officially started its Denver service on January 3 and it did so with a bang, even though its initial flight schedule – consisting of just 13 daily hops to Phoenix, Las Vegas and Chicago – is a mere blip on the overall DIA radar screen. Southwest, though, claims the very announcement that it was arriving on the scene has already resulted in competing fares being trimmed to those cities by 40-50%. And it immediately announced , beginning March 4. Industry insiders expect more to come, in part because flight cutbacks resulting from Hurricane Katrina left the airline with more planes than demand on existing routes.
United, for its part, has fired back with that blast its newest competitor by using a twisted version of Southwest’s own tagline. "With Southwest, you are kinda, sorta free to move about a few places in the country nonstop," says the United copy – a not-so-subtle dig at Southwest’s ubiquitous advertising slogan, “You are now free to move about the country."
While officials of the beleaguered airlines already serving Denver fight the newbie with everything they can, those of us who slog around the country from DIA on business and pleasure anxiously await the resultant price wars. In this era when far too many short-haul flights have become no-frills nightmares, airfare from Denver to just about anywhere has remained relatively high because of the city’s one-carrier dominance. Southwest seems prepared to force the issue, just as People Express That experiment (which permitted a family of four to fly roundtrip between Denver and Newark for less than $350) ended poorly after a brilliant start. But the business has changed a lot since then, every airline requires that you carry on your own sack lunch these days, and Southwest seems already to have proven it can dish out as much as it receives.
So let the fare wars begin.
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