Southwest Airlines’ return to Denver answers a question that has plagued Denver International Airport since its opening 10 years ago.
“If your airport’s so great, why doesn’t Southwest fly into it?” said Tom Clark, executive vice president of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corp.
Southwest departed from Denver’s Stapleton International Airport in 1986 and for nearly two decades resisted plea upon plea from city officials to return. The persistence – some might say groveling – appears to have finally paid off.
The Dallas-based carrier first came to Denver in 1983 with high expectations for cheap travel.
At a Denver lunch that May, company chairman Herbert Kelleher promised half-price fares that would be widely available.
“You don’t have to be a left-handed catcher with a red-headed monkey who makes a reservation four weeks in advance and comes back on a Wednesday without one of his small children” to qualify for a Southwest fare, he cracked.
It was classic Kelleher. But three years later, when the congested and weather-plagued Stapleton began accounting for 50 percent of the delays in Southwest’s system, the airline was gone.
The delays that caused Southwest’s departure made the city an object of national ridicule, Stephen Kaplan, then Denver’s city attorney, said Thursday. They also motivated the construction of Denver International Airport.
“The airlines were experiencing incredible costs in delays when there was bad weather. It affected the ability of an airline to run an efficient operation,” he said.
Southwest refused to return, even if a new airport operated more efficiently. When Southwest acquired Morris Air, the airline pulled its Colorado Springs and Denver flights, citing high costs.
In the 1990s, Denver’s director of aviation, Jim DeLong, said he couldn’t make headway with Southwest executives, whom he had come to know well when he was the operations chief at Houston’s Hobby Airport.
Southwest’s official line: Higher expenses at DIA didn’t make a return feasible.
“There are three things we’re concerned about at Denver, and those are costs, costs, costs,” Ed Stewart, Southwest spokesman, said in 2003.
DeLong said there was another reason. Southwest’s model at the time didn’t include going head-to-head with the bigger carriers in the hubs they dominated.
But Southwest in the 1990s successfully grabbed dominance in Baltimore from US Airways and repeated the feat in Pittsburgh.
“They won’t go into a fortress hub unless they seem to feel if there is some weakness where the airline is preoccupied with its own survival,” DeLong said.
Also, DIA has had success in getting its costs per passenger down, thanks to higher retail and parking revenues and more passenger traffic, said Susan Stanton, vice president of the DIA Partnership.
At the same time, some older airports have seen costs rise.
“DIA is at much greater parity now than when it opened,” Kap lan said.
Although they never gave up on Southwest, economic-development officials said they were surprised when the airline decided to come back on its terms, not theirs.
Clark learned the news only Thursday.
“We were caught flat-footed,” he said.
Staff writer Aldo Svaldi can be reached at 303-820-1410 or asvaldi@denverpost.com.
