Southwest Airlines wants you to think they have a corporate heart as big as Mount Rainier.
Recently, America's most successful airline plopped its senior vice president Ron Ricks down at Boeing Field for a press conference concerning its desire to shift operations from Sea-Tac to the historic Duwamish River valley airport.
Ricks told the crowd the airline wanted to build its own eight-gate terminal and accompanying seven-level parking garage across the tarmac from its airplane supplier's main stomping ground. The estimated $130 million bill would be on them, Ricks assured.
"Christmas in July for King County, Seattle and Puget Sound," he crowed.
It's a present all right, but not for the people of King County.
Its own presents
Southwest is America's most successful airline. For the last 57 quarters - 14 years and three months in lay terms - the Dallas-based carrier has turned a profit. This year, from April to June, its profits clicked in at $159 million, a whopping 41-percent increase over the last quarter.
The airline can afford to plunk down less than a quarter's worth of profits to build its own terminal and pull away from Sea-Tac, an airport Southwest's chief executive Gary Kelly calls the most expensive his company uses out of the 60 it serves nationwide.
Yep, these Texas flyboys are flush with cash, and they're eager to aggressively expand before its current jet-fuel options, the company's prime cost-savings device, sputter out.
Oil is currently hitting around $60 a barrel, but Southwest wisely invested in cost-savvy oil options that locked in its price under $30 a barrel for the next four years. By the time its pre-purchase deal drops to 25 percent of the jet-fuel Southwest will buy, it will be 2009, the same year Southwest has proposed to shift their passenger flights from Sea-Tac to Boeing Field.
In response to Southwest's move threat, supported eagerly by county executive Ron Sims, the Port of Seattle has assured the airline that its per-passenger fee will increase from $7.50 to around $9.60 when the Sea-Tac expansion bill comes due in 2009. This is a far cry from the $25 per-passenger fee the port predicted two years ago.
So, it is a Christmas for Southwest, and its corporate hardball game is already giving them a portion of their presents with the lowered fees.
Whose loss?
While it seems obvious that Southwest is merely trying to leverage Sea-Tac into giving it whatever it wants, area taxpayers must stay alert in case the county executives start folding like a cheap cardboard table in the face of glittering corporate promises. The executives hold the keys to Southwest's plans, for they're the keepers of the lease the airline requires to proceed.
But who will pay for the road improvements needed to avoid turning Seattle's already-bad traffic congestion into a nightmare? Tukwila mayor Steve Mullet estimates these road infrastructure costs at $100 million.
And what about the noise of an estimated additional 85 jet landings and 85 jet takeoffs Southwest and Boeing Field officials say will hit the airport by 2013 if the deal goes down? Will Seattle and county authorities pay to demolish near-airport homes and sound-insulate schools and residences like they did for Sea-Tac to the tune of $500 million?
Will the flight patterns be shifted over Elliott Bay, sparing the already noise-impacted residents in Magnolia but making life unbearable for Georgetown's residents? On that note, will this kill the community revitalization organically growing in Georgetown?
Be wary of what Ricks and the other Southwest suits promise in the heat of a traditional roadside, snake-oil sales pitch. Inside their mountain-sized Texas hearts sits a ruthless concern for the bottom line that gives lip service to Seattle's neighborhoods to the north and south of the ship canal.
Erik Hansen is editor of the Beacon Hill News & South District Journal, an associate publication of the Herald-Outlook. He can be reached at needitor @nwlink.com.
[[In-content Ad]]
