Extreme nitpick on my part: Southwest isn't actually a legacy carrier: they were one of the first "low-cost" carriers to begin interstate travel after the airlines were deregulated in 1978. The only remaining legacy carriers in the US are Delta, American, United, Hawaiian, and Alaska.
Sorry I wasn’t clear- you’re correct. I didn’t intend to imply southwest is one of the legacy carriers. I edited my original post.
It sounds reasonable but I’m surprised that it’s not “cost efficient” to have a few sore planes and crews strategically located around the USA - you’d only need three or four to be able to respond within hours to any scheduling mishap. Margins must be quite low.
The stock marget rewards profits, not happy customers. It’s not about the margins, it’s about maximizing the bottom line
Yes margins on the core flying are pathetically low. Planes are $50 million+ pieces of capital equipment and high utilization is the only way to make the numbers work. Southwest is legendary for their quick turns which keep utilization high. It's just not as resilient during irregular operations.
I remember reading years ago that Fedex actually kept one or two spare planes in the air every night to respond to breakdowns.
Sadly fedex being late on deliveries probably affects and costs them more than southwest cancelling a flight.
Ryanair in Europe pretty much operates the same with many small hubs and point-to-point flights, but for some reason they are also run objectively a very reliable operation. Wonder why that is.
RyanAir does a lot of point to point but they don’t do it the way WN does. RyanAir will have a plane make multiple runs on say, London to Rome. WN will work a plane from Oakland to Denver to Dallas to Florida (I’m just picking WN concentration cities, that’s not a real route). In fact, something crazy like 30% of WN planes will hit Florida daily.