Southwest Airlines marks its 45th year in business next month, but to hear Chief Executive Gary Kelly tell it, the carrier can still undergo a major growth spurt.
“We still have tremendous opportunities to expand,” the CEO of the Dallas-based airline said Monday during a meeting with the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board.
Southwest serves 98 destinations, of which 87 are in the United States. The latest is Long Beach, Calif., where service begins next month.
In 2014, it launched international flights and currently serves 11 foreign markets, with the focus mostly on Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. About three international flights depart daily from Chicago’s Midway Airport, where it has one of its biggest operations.
Southwest, which consistently gets high service scores, has one of the world’s largest fleets.
It has 714 Boeing 737s and, “with the expansion opportunities that have now been created, we have potentially 50 more destinations we can add to our route map, all in North America with some, maybe a half a dozen cities, that are a potential for us in South America,” said Kelly, who is in Chicago for his company’s annual shareholder meeting.
“Hawaii, Alaska are both in scope, and Canada is easily within our scope,” Kelly said.
Additional opportunity exists in Mexico, the Caribbean and Central America, he said, but, “having said that, over the next 15 to 20 to 25 years, I’ll bet most of our expansion will be in the 48 states because we fly point to point and there are still a lot of major” cities that Southwest doesn’t serve.
Besides travelers who are fans of Southwest, that could also be good news for Chicago-based Boeing, maker of the 737.
“Those growth opportunities equate to maybe 500 airplanes on top of the 714 we already have,” Kelly said, not committing to a timeline for those airplane orders.
Chicago Tribune
