Surely I’m biased, but I think the airline business is both one of the most difficult and most fascinating industries around. Certainly it’s one of the most competitive, with constant fare wars, extremely high costs, many players, and a host of other complications. Right now rumors abound of mergers, including Northwest-Delta and United-Continental. Although I have no insider knowledge, I think there’s a chance Southwest will jump in if those mergers go through. We could buy assets of an existing airline or buy one outright. I keep wondering about AirTran, an Orlando-based airline that operates a hub in Atlanta, the world’s busiest airport and a major city that we don’t serve. It flies 737s like us plus 717s, a smaller aircraft from Boeing that would allow us to serve some “thinner” markets that don’t have enough traffic for 737 service. Their costs are low, as is their market capitalization (the value of all its stock). The hardest part would be merging the two employee groups, but we’ve done it before (see Morris Air). This should be an interesting year!

Speaking of Southwest, have you visited our Southwest community page? A number of employees post articles on a variety of topics, and many of our customers respond. It’s well-done and quite informative!

I also bet you’re hoping for a baby gender update, eh? Patience, patience…Our appointment is at 4:00 pm. I’ll post it tonight for all to see after our CARES team meeting.