Air War: Does Southwest Have Alaska Airlines in the Crosshairs?
Alaska Airlines (ALK) loves its position up in the far corner of the country. Other airlines usually leave it alone - out of sight, out of mind, right? Not so fast. Southwest made a couple of winter schedule changes this week that make it clear that Alaska is on the radar. It almost felt like a dog owner whacking a puppy with a newspaper.
Southwest announced a few new routes beginning November 7, but two of them caught my eye. The first is the the reintroduction of St Louis to Seattle flights once a day. The second is the introduction of Austin to San Jose flying twice daily. Are these related?
For the St. Louis market, the timing seems very clear. This was one of the few markets that survived when American slashed its St Louis hub, but Southwest had designs on it. Last October, Southwest announced it would move in to the market in May 2010. Just as quickly as it started, it disappeared. The last flight was scheduled for August 14.
It wasn't first announced as seasonal, but it wouldn't surprise me if that was the plan. Regardless, it was enough to scare American away. That airline will end flights in the market on August 23, just a few days after Southwest.
Seattle is a fantastic market in the summer (think cruises) and a much worse one in the winter. Seasonal service is the norm up there, and though Southwest announced the route would be going away, I fully expected it would come back next winter. Then a funny thing happened.
In June, Alaska announced it would begin flights from St Louis to Seattle on September 27. Now here we are in August with Southwest saying that it changed its mind. It's coming back on the route in November. Clearly the market wasn't so bad that it's not worth fighting for. And there could be another part of this.
The Austin to San Jose route may not sound like a traditional Alaska Airlines market, but it was really more of an opportunistic move by the airline than anything else. Austin-San Jose is the fabled Nerd Bird route. Throngs of techies in two of the hottest tech spots in the country used to shuttle back and forth on American from its mini-hub in San Jose, paying absurd amounts of money to do so. That route stood out during the dotcom boom of the late 90's as one of the richest. It all came crashing down, as we know, but the route didn't disappear.
American actually continued to fly the route until August 2009, when it decided to throw in the towel. Not long after, Alaska stepped in to fill the void. Initially, one flight a day was announced, but that quickly became two a day. Clearly Alaska liked what it was seeing. And now Southwest does as well.
Southwest will start flying the route twice a day, matching Alaska's schedule. Could these two route announcements be connected? There is a chance. It's an old-school competitive tactic to match your foe and then one-up him with another flight to show your displeasure. Airlines have done that for years, but this seems a bit too difficult to connect the dots. More likely is that Southwest isn't happy about Alaska encroaching on to its turf. Nothing wrong with a little friendly competition, right?