Southwest Spreads Its Wings Airline Known For Short Hops Adds Longer Flights To System

Alma Webb was spending 11 hours flying cross-country on Southwest Airlines Co., with no meal, no movie and no frills.

No big deal, the 65-year-old traveler said.

Snacks are OK, and she doesn’t expect frills. Other airlines would take as long to get her to her friend’s home and would charge her a lot more than the $267 round-trip fare she paid to get to Sacramento, Calif., she said.

“And from what I hear, the meals on other airlines aren’t anything to talk about,” added the Dunedin, Fla., retiree.

Suddenly, there are a lot of people flying long distances on Southwest. The Dallas carrier, which created the model of the short-haul airline, is stretching its wings a lot farther.

In the past two years, Southwest has added more than a dozen flights of more than 1,000 miles, two times its average flight of 410 miles. It is now taking customers coast to coast.

The new flights link Southwest’s East Coast cities such as Baltimore, Providence, R.I., and its Florida cities to West Coast destinations such as Los Angeles and Oakland, Calif. Now, travelers need only a single stop in such mid-America cities as Nashville, Tenn.; Kansas City, Mo.; and Albuquerque, N.M., to traverse the continent.

That’s not unusual for other major airlines like American Airlines Inc. or United Airlines Inc., which average more than 1,000 miles per flight.

But it’s slightly revolutionary for Southwest, which began life 26 years ago hopping a few hundred miles between Dallas Love Field, Houston and San Antonio. Since then, its lifeblood has been frequent service and flights lasting one hour or less.

Part of the change is evolutionary as the airline has expanded into most sections of the country, from California to Rhode Island and Florida. But a big part of Southwest’s long-haul growth resulted from a calculated strategy to combat taxes.

In July, Congress adopted a new tax system that penalizes low-fare carriers like Southwest and lowered tariffs on such higher-fare carriers as American.

Southwest Chairman Herbert D. Kelleher saw it coming. As originally proposed by his bigger rivals, the new taxes would have cost Southwest as much as $200 million a year, he said.

“When your board (of directors) says, ‘Herb, are you going to do anything about this?’ it’s kind of hazardous to your job security to say I think I’ll just sit around and wait and see what happens,”’ Kelleher said recently.

The new tax, which went into effect Oct. 1, reduces the traditional 10 percent tax on ticket prices but adds a flat tax charged per flight.

Short-haul, cheaper flights, which are Southwest’s specialty, will be charged higher taxes, while the tax on long-haul flights will decrease.

Southwest fought fiercely against the new taxing method but lost.

“We started hedging right then and there,” Kelleher said. “The longer (the flights) we flew, the more we had hedged against it.”

In the past five months alone, Southwest has added eight nonstop routes stretching over 1,500 miles, including its longest flight - Nashville to Oakland, 1,959 miles. It also has started Nashville flights to Los Angeles, 1,797 miles, and last October it added Nashville-Las Vegas, 1,588 miles.

Michael Boyd, an airline industry consultant, said despite the longer flights, Southwest doesn’t need to serve meals or do much to change its in-flight service to capture long-haul passengers. It competes on other elements of customer service, such as its on-time record, he said.

“It’s my understanding that Southwest’s galleys are being modified to handle two bags of peanuts per passenger,” joked Boyd, president of The Boyd Group/ASRC.