Southwest Airlines Plans Europe Flights—CEO Teases New Nashville Route And Airline’s First-Ever Lounge
It looks like Southwest Airlines is going to start flying to Iceland.
- They’ve partnered with Icelandair, and could sell seats on their own planes to Reykjavik, connecting passengers onto Icelandair flights into Europe.
- They can reach Iceland from a stronghold like Baltimore using their current Boeing 737 MAXs. These would not be a great passenger experience with no ovens in the galley, no first class, no seat back entertainment and inferior wifi. But it’s a similar distance to West Coast – Hawaii where passengers put up with the inflight product today.
This would allow Southwest’s passengers to redeem their points to Europe, also, which should help the co-brand credit card business. Money from card partner Chase was a big impetus for Hawaii flying as well.
Southwest CEO Bob Jordan said he wants to fly transatlantic from Nashville, too. And he’s talking up sprucing up the experience and offering a lounge, too.
Nashville loves us, and we know we have Nashville customers that want lounges. They want first class. They want to get to Europe and they’re going to Europe…I want to send fewer and fewer customers to another airline.
Iceland is a strong seasonal (summer) destination but also an efficient connection point for the rest of Europe. Southwest needs to pick cities where they’re strong, and that lack significant non-stop flights across the Pond – otherwise they’ll be at a huge disadvantage since their Europe offerings will be at a disadvantage having to connect in Iceland (and with a product that’s inferior to competitors). They’d be chasing the lowest yield revenue, and doing it in the off-season as well. Even with a fuel-efficient narrowbody aircraft that’s a recipe for losing money.
As Enilria points out on significant limitation of Southwest is that they’ve been unable to sell tickets in foreign currency, which means they’re limited to U.S. point of sale (“they are 100 years behind Pan Am on being able to accept foreign currencies”).
That didn’t work when they triend flying to Canada, but they can do alright selling Mexico vacation travel to Americans. Limiting themselves to traffic from the U.S. would harm their operation even further, although this could be the impetus that finally forces them to overcome the challenge.
Southwest CEO Bob Jordan no longer commits to everything, having publicly promised this past fall that the airline would never charge for checked bags before being overruled by the new board installed by Elliott Management. So he also talks about possibly buying widebody aircraft in the future. Whatever the board tells him to do, I guess.