You might want to Ctr+F 'cash flow' on your link Riverman

What does Southwest do differently wrt boarding and deplaning?

I imagine they treat their customers like a 10th class citizen for starters

lol cash flow as a measure of business health or even profitability

last year they spent 950 million dollars retiring debt and buying back stock and still had +$284m net change in cash

CDL is embarrassing himself by implying southwest isn't a very, very profitable and healthy company

I see ~$1.5B in annual operating cash flow each year, 09-12.

total shareholder equity has climbed from 5.5b in '09 to 7.0b in '12, so looks profitable to me.

I'm looking at it right now on Bloomberg:

FCF was $294 MM since 12/31/07.

Embarassing lack of discussion of GOAT level SNES game itt

Just because they couldn't get *all* the paperwork done does not mean they wouldn't get *any* of it done. It's always easier to cancel something than re-issue something.

The part where, to an American, it's seemingly rational to travel by road to another country (without a passport) so they can fly within that country and vaca and then fly back to their home country (without a passport) as a perfectly sensible alternative to dealing with a passport office which is unable to provide a same day turnaround for a last-minute realized lost passport. Around the rest of the world you would be risking getting pretty ****ed by doing that (such that they would never consider it), so they would think of you as either sheltered and ignorant of the potential repurcussions, or downright spoiled rotten by a country that tolerates this sort of thing whereas theirs would drag them around by the short hairs for same.

you guys cant just count cash from ops and act like thats the whole picture. lol at doing that.

I do admit I cherry picked CF over EBITDA though. Airlines are like the WOAT industry by any metric though. There is simply no net money to be had in the industry.

to clarify we would have been driving back across not flying. and since I have a house in TJ and drive back and forth between SD and TJ very often, I've heard plenty of stories of people who have lost their passport in TJ and had no problem coming back across with just their CA ID and some additional searching/patdown. (until recently a passport wasn't even required) not really sure what other repercussions there could be. worst case we would just hang out at my house in TJ until we got a new passport sorted out.

if this trip was between any other 2 countries besides USA and Mex we obviously wouldn't be considering traveling w/o a passport as a viable alternative.

if considering traveling w/o a passport between 2 countries for whom a passport wasn't even required to travel between as of just a few years ago is a reason for people to hate americans then haters gonna hate i guess.

Yes it is a challenging industry but it doesn't have to be as bad as it is. There are lots of craptastic industries that make money. The whole point of bringing up Southwest is to prove that it is possible to make lots of money over a sustained period of time running an airline. The legacy carriers are some of the most horribly managed organizations out there.

Southwest is by far my favorite airline to travel

Boarding you get a spot in line.

There are three groups (A/B/C) and 60 numbers within each group. Instead of a seat, you get a letter and number giving you your spot in line. After the pre-boards (disabled etc.) group A gets on in numerical order. There are no assigned seats, so you just take whatever seat you want. After group A they let families board, which is necessary so parents can sit with their children. Then it's groups B and C.

Your spot in line is based on check-in time, you can check in online starting 24 hours before your flight. The equivalent of first class is business select, all seats are in the same class, which lets you get on in the first 15 spots. They also automatically check you in earlier if you are a frequent flyer.

It's a lot more efficient. There are two downsides. The biggest is people saving seats, especially in the emergency-exit row even though that's not supposed to be allowed. So if you have a low number and somebody in front is saving an emergency-exit seat for their wife, you have to get into a conflict with a guy you're sitting next to for the entire flight. The other negative is the rare situation where a family gets there late and somebody has to move from an aisle or window to a middle. They ask for volunteers and offer free drink coupons so it usually works out.

edit:

Getting off is the same pretty much. It is slightly better because they don't charge for check-in bags so people have less luggage. Also, if you fly across the country it's not uncommon to have flights where you stop but there is no plane change. If you're in that spot it's great because the stopover is a lot shorter, you don't have the hassle of scrambling around the airport and you can get a good seat for the second leg. Sometimes you do have time to get off and get some food. I guess it makes it a bit faster for everyone since there are a handful of people not getting off that you don't have to wait for.

Explain how one would consistently make money in an industry with unreal capex requirements and absolutely no pricing power and high regulation.

If operational efficiency improves in the industry then pricing suffers.

I could be mistaken, but I think a lot of Southwest's profitability over the last decade has been related to jet fuel hedges that have been timed much much better than any other player. That's not a good business model.

calling saving seats a downside is even pretty nitty imo. since a saved seat is almost always gonna be a middle its pretty much only an issue with exit row seats and in my experience the flight attendants are usually standing right next to the exit rows to make sure no conflicts arise from people trying to save them.

Uh, I already did. By the way, your description fits the oil industry and a few firms manage to make a buck there.

Not necessarily. There is no requirement that efficiency savings get passed along to consumers.

You are. They had some good fuel hedges several years ago but that has not been a major contributor to their profitability.

By the way, Southwest has been profitable for the last 40 consecutive years. GJGE.

CDL,

who is forcing all these companies to be in the airline industry?

They also have the best/easiest/most customer friendly : bag fees, loyalty program, change fees/policies, redemption of free flights policy.

yeah SWA is the nuts for a multitude of reasons

Definitely nitty and, yeah, it probably doesn't apply to most people. Might just be because I fly a lot and my frequent-flyer classification usually makes me one of the first few after business select. Have definitely had it happen a few times where a business select guy or very frequent flyer tried to save the whole exit row. Like you said, the flight attendant is there, but it's still awkward and you're stuck next to the *******s the whole flight.

I often watch speedruns of these games while playing poker, very nice for a nostalgia kick. Here's a few of my favorites:

LttP - (Start at 2:04) http://www.twitch.tv/christosowen/c/1958168
Goldeneye - http://www.twitch.tv/perfectace05/c/1979794
Super Mario RPG - (Starts at 12:53) http://www.twitch.tv/cyghfer/b/293200573
Super Smash Brothers - (Starts at 5:30) http://www.twitch.tv/purtle/b/402335573
Your game not here? Search on http://speedrunslive.com/races/#!/gamelist/alphabetical

Took me like 10+ minutes to find good streams for you guys, so enjoy :P

lol i remember some people getting super mad about that. then i would sneak up behind them and shoot them in the back of the head.

Shame, i'd spent a lot of time looking up speedruns of games you guys posted in the last 2 pages but i accidentally deleted it. Anyways just search for it at -

http://speedrunslive.com/races/#!/gamelist/alphabetical

Good way to pass the time while playing poker

screen lookers should be banned