Hi Sharon and swamt,
here are some comments from the LUV earnings conference call last week in case you haven't seen them.
"And the other point to reiterate right now is that, for purposes of 2014 in the way you're thinking about us, we're pretty much going to take the AirTran International route system and simply move it gradually into Southwest. That's not literally true, but at the same time, we're not anticipating any bold moves here with new international markets and a lot of additional capacity in 2014. I think this sets the stage once we get through 2014 and the final integration, get the Wright Amendment repealed, it sets the stage for us to think about doing more with international in 2015 and especially when the Houston Hobby international terminal comes online in late 2015. But what you see right now is pretty much what you should expect for 2014 in terms of that international footprint."
"We're going to have, from this point forward until we finish the integration, 10 to 15 more aircraft out of service than we normally would as one vivid example. So these are airplanes that have been pulled out of service to go through a physical conversion, either 737s into Southwest or 717s into Delta, and that is pretty inefficient. I mentioned in my opening remarks, just the ongoing inefficiency of managing 2 airlines. So there's a hangover for that. But the training cost associated with our flight crews is quite substantial. So not only do you have airplanes that have a higher number out of service, but you also have a lot of employees that are, in effect, not in revenue service."
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"Well, just to recap what we've said so far. At least in recent times, the percentage of our route system that is "under development" is a very high. So I think we shared that it's 16% of our available seat miles. That is going to be sustained throughout this year. And then when we have the final retirement of AirTran and integration into Southwest, it'll actually step up. So you're going to see a lot of "optimization" taking place certainly this year. And then next year, we'll have a lot of opportunities that unfold, and Bob will have a lot of choices to make about where we might want to add new routes. But I think we're still in pretty heavy optimization mode, wouldn't you say, Bob?"
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"One thing to point out with our capacity in 2015 is that we're going to have capacity growth next year, simply because you'll have a much higher percentage of aircraft out of nonproductive status. So even without adding any airplanes next year, we'll be able to add some capacity. And we'll have to factor that in to whatever choices that we want to make for next year."