Southwest will not expand fleet in 2009

Southwest Airlines’ chief executive said on Tuesday that due to a significant drop in demand for travel in November the carrier won’t be expanding its fleet in the coming year.

Gary Kelly, the carrier’s chairman and CEO, also indicated that capacity would be cut early in the year, but not as sharply as was earlier planned.

“October was a bang-up month, almost unexplainably strong,” Kelly commented. “The trends changed in November,” after the financial meltdown, he added.

“Obviously we’re concerned about the economy,” Kelly stressed, but noted that he wasn’t expecting another sharp decline in U.S. air travel in December.

According the airline executive, Southwest’s January schedule will show a cut in capacity of 4-5 per cent for the first quarter, somewhat lower than the carrier’s previous goal of reducing capacity by 5-6 per cent.

Other airlines in the U.S. have made sharp capacity cuts in recent months, which Southwest was seeing as an opportunity for expansion. However, air passenger traffic isn’t supporting the airline’s ambitious plans at this time.

Also on Tuesday, the Dallas-based carrier reported that paying passenger numbers dropped in November by 10.7 percent, as compared with the same month last year, while its supply of seats remained largely unchanged.

In November, Southwest carried approximately 6.5 million passengers, down from the 7.3 million carried in November of 2007. Planes were 63.2 per cent full, down by 6.1 per cent from November last year.

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