Southwest means business with NY service

June 26, 2009|Associated Press

DALLAS - LaGuardia Airport is the smallest of the New York City area’s three major airports, with just two main runways. Planes often sit in long lines, waiting their turn. So why would Southwest Airlines, which boasts about its on-time prowess, want to go there? In many ways, because it has to.

On Sunday, Southwest starts service at congested LaGuardia - part of a risky transition Southwest knows it has to make to win business travelers.

Southwest prospered by offering low fares to leisure travelers and flying to secondary airports, where costs are lower and where planes can land and then get back in the air quickly.

The carrier still sees itself as an underdog, even as it carries more than 100 million US passengers per year, more than any other airline. There are still no first-class cabins and no assigned seats. Yet company surveys show that in normal times at least 40 percent of passengers are traveling on business. Southwest needs them - it’s been profitable for 36 straight years but has been in the red since last fall. Traffic is down and costs are rising.

Robert Crandall, who ran American Airlines in the 1980s and ’90s, said Southwest has stuck to a well-defined model of low fares and low costs at secondary airports. “Going into LaGuardia is a change to that model,’’ Crandall said, “but they’ve decided they don’t have any choice - they need the [passenger] volume to grow.’’

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