[bzax]

Not only does Southwest exclusively fly Boeing aircraft, they exclusively fly 737s, which enables their unusual routing style. Essentially every pilot and crew at Southwest can fly any aircraft the company has for them. Presumably this gives Boeing a strong incentive to keep making new 737s that push the engineering envelope, instead of making a new narrowbody aircraft.

[rainsford]

That strategy makes some sense in the short to medium term, but I always wonder what the end game is supposed to be. Convincing Boeing to just keep making 737 variants forever so Southwest can keep flying a single aircraft type seems like it will lock the two in a death spiral where they slowly become less and less competitive due to forced reliance on an increasingly aging airframe. The MAX is an obvious example of the types of compromises that need to be made to try to keep pace, but it sees unlikely it will be the last. At some point both Boeing and Southwest need a path to replace the 737 entirely.

[leoedin]

Other airlines have switched from exclusively Boeing to exclusively Airbus - eg Easyjet did in the early 2000s, and operated a mixed fleet for about a decade.

https://simpleflying.com/easyjet-boeing-to-airbus/

Obviously it's more of a challenge, but it's not insurmountable.

[euroderf]

If Southwest will have to make One Big Decision on its next generation, Airbus could have a reasonable shot at it eh.