United Fact Checks Southwest In Sassy New Denver Ad

Egos will ego.
United slept for 15 years while Southwest built a massive operation from the ground up and did pass up United in LOCAL Denver passengers for more than a decade.
Competition is good.

"we aren’t trying to hide anything in the fine print." - not if we wanted you to see it

Why would I care about the origin of my fellow passengers? Is it better to sit next to a passenger from Denver than to sit next to one from Salt Lake City or Dallas?

I would be more interested in an airline offering the best complimentary service/connections/value/customer service etc.

UA was bigger in local numbers even without the WN meltdown. UA numbers are higher this year too, and will continue to grow as the 700 aircraft orders continue to come online.

@Klaus - You’d have to ask Southwest why they think it’s important. They’re the ones who put it in ads around the airport and on local tv ads that still run today, even though their numbers are out of date.

United only put this up to correct Southwest and set the record straight.

WN will receive its much delayed 737 Max7s before UA gets its Max 10s. This chapter of dominance is not at all written

Given that some of the marketing minds from Spirit's more shall we say interesting advertising days are now at Frontier, I could see a "Size doesn't matter, it's what you do with it" ad.

Some irony in Southwest using a selective dataset to make its #1 claim when years ago they ran their famous "Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire" ad against NWA who had made a different #1 claim by conveniently leaving Southwest out of that comparison. I sort of wish UA just updated that ad and ran it back against them.

Who in the world is this ad targeting at? Southwest doesn't have premium seats (so that market segment is out) and I will bet 95% of coach passengers fly what's cheapest. I will also bet you 95% don't remember/don't know/don't care about Southwest's "holiday meltdown."

Say what they want. It's ads.
Problem was and always has been people believing too easy on these (or any) propaganda.

The industry even got doctors to endorse smoking cigarette up until the 50s.

Takeaway Lesson: UA will make the fine print readable ONLY when it suits them (which is why you've never seen it till today).

In a nutshell, few if anyone base their ticket purchase on which airlines carries the most local passengers. It isn't relevant to the buying decision. Move on

United has *700* planes on order and is currently receiving two planes per week, a rate that continues through next year. They will soon have 90 gates in DEN, significantly more than Southwest.

How is there any world where UA’s lead doesn’t expand?

That may end up being the case, but WN's gate utilization is a lot higher. I forget the numbers I read years ago now, but it was something like twice that of UA at the time. So the number of gates alone doesn't mean more passengers.

I mean, why does anybody care?
In the last city where I lived, Ryanair was the airline carrying the most passengers. It doesn't make me want to fly with Ryanair...
There are loads of factors that go into booking a flight, but it is hard to imagine that being the one that carries the most passengers is one of them for most people. (Of course, that can mean that they have more flights available, which certainly is a factor, but that is not the disputed statistic, so...)

Delta did a similar ad blitz too with their free Wi-Fi rollout claiming they were the first to have it fleet wide as a major carrier. They weren’t, JetBlue was the first as a major carrier fleet wide. The only thing that made it “true” was to put in very small print based on some ridiculous amount of emplanements. So they became first by creating a metric no one cares about.

because WN uses ONLY mainline aircraft so they have the potential to board a whole lot more passengers per flight.
Add in that UA connects a higher percentage of passengers and WN could board more local passengers per flight than UA.

Finally, UA will not receive as many narrowbodies this year as planned. Boeing just told them this.

And Delta will place more aircraft into service this year than any other US airline - a combination of new deliveries, used aircraft being placed in service, and reactivations of parked aircraft.

When discussing "major" U.S. carriers, basically no one considers JetBlue, Hawaiian, or Alaska to be part of that group. The term virtually always refers to either AA, UA, and DL, or AA, UA, DL, and WN.

JetBlue is essentially irrelevant anywhere other than the Northeast or South Florida/Caribbean markets.

Now, if JetBlue's acquisition of Spirit ends up being approved and they play their cards right - including either opening one or more mid-continent hubs or keeping a more Spirit or Southwest-like point-to-point network - then they have a shot at becoming a major airline. But, as of now, they are not by any reasonable definition.