Southwest to Serve Denver
Oct 20th, 2005 | By Jared BlankUnited cannot be happy about this: Southwest announced that it will begin service to Denver early next year. Cities and fares to be announced next week. Southwest has become so much more aggressive in the past couple of years, taking on weak carriers (US Airways at Pittsburgh and Philly) and kicking the crap out of them. They have the same in store for United.
I think it highly inaccurate to say LUV “kicked the crap” out of USAirways. Indeed, the evidence (albeit preliminary) suggests USAirways won that battle by merging with America West, which is why LUV is looking for other opportunities.
LUV absolutely kicked the crap out of US Airways in PHL and PIT (which is what I was saying above). US Airways could never have survived WITHOUT the merger and with the increased competition in those two hubs.
I also should’ve mentioned above that Frontier won’t be happy about Southwest’s incursion into Denver, though typically Southwest has tried to avoid going head-to-head with other discounters as much as possible. Regardless, the market did not look favorably at Frontier after this announcement.
You have a very generous definition of “crap kicking.” :