Holly Hegeman reports that Southwest is advertising for an ETOPS manager.
One only needs to consult Wikipedia on ETOPS if you aren’t familiar to know that it means they’re looking to fly significant distances over water that are far from the nearest diversion airport.
And their current aircraft won’t make it to Europe. The folks down in Dallas are getting themselves positioned to fly to Hawaii!
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More like in Dallas 😉 But I’m more excited about what this will do to prices on UA etc.
I’ll look forward to the fare wars!
Or could they be looking to get in on some longer range gov’t charters that require ETOPS?
Sun Country ran limited MSP-London flights this summer (tech stop enroute), rumored partly to qualify for gov’t charter contracts (apparently they had to demonstrate organizational capability for ETOPS).
@Andy yes of course I literally thought Dallas as I somehow typed Houston. Weird.
Do Cancun or San Juan require ETOPS?
How badly will this affect other carriers that serve the islands?
@msp2anywhere
Aren’t gov aircraft exempt from etops? Seems odd that they would require it for charters but not for their own aircraft?
@sean
IIRC, gov’t owned a/c are exempt (but fall under individual branch/dod/departmental regs), but chartered would still fall under FAA guidelines.
My exposure is USAF-centric, where the vast majority of our long range capability is 4 engine, with a some C-40s (737s) around the globe and the C-32s (757s) at Andrews. Not sure about the smaller biz jets in PACAF.
Not knocking the Hawaii speculation, though, which would be nice, but kinda looooong on a Southwest bird. With the AirTran buyout maybe they’re literally going to take on the world?
American Samoa Government proposing to SW inaugurate a service Pago Pago to Honolulu. PG to HON is Hawaiian Air’s most profitable route. $1,300 return.
From Pago Pago
John Wasko
@John it is NOT Hawaiian’s most profitable route, in fact federal subsidies are necessary for Hawaiian to be willing to fly it. High fares, low loads.