Southwest Needs to Reinvent Its "Low-Cost Carrier" Image

Ya got that right. Anytime Southwest saturates a city, it is NEVER a good thing. Many times other airlines pull out entirely, or offer connecting flights only. Southwest is the only nonstop and can jack up the fare. Take a look at St. Louis/Kansas City/Oklahoma City/Tulsa..these cities are predominately Southwest markets and fares are HIGH. Bags or not..not worth flying SW even with their 'ding' fares.

Most of the time, flying out of CMH, Southwest is either cheaper or the same price as US, and generally cheaper than any other airline that services CMH. And that's even considering the $12.50/way "earlybird" fee that I like. But they are becoming much less of a "low cost" carrier.

Yes, Southwest is trying to market itself as some sort of business carrier, but will have trouble doing so without much in the way of elite benefits, codeshares, or . All it really offers compared to other carriers these days is a lot of domestic flights. Additionally at many of their large airports they have become a victim of their own success - they have saturated MDW to a point where security lines are often close to an hour and the airfield now has as many delays as O'hare. The businesses practices that made sense for them in 1993 and 2003 often don't work in 2013, but they are very loathe to wake up to that reality.