Photo: Boeing Media
Southwest is a well known airline in the United States, largely by offering trips at prices well below market, but this was only possible thanks to large standardized fleet with the Boeing 737, for all these 45 years.
Southwest not expanded as much as the past 10 years, the fleet it can be seen below. We note that in 2006 the company not yet had the new series of Boeing 737-800 NG, but the rapid renewal possible to reduce costs and increase the standard capacity with new aircraft, supporting up to 189 passengers.
In 2006, the airline had three types of aircraft: 194 Boeing 737 -300, 25 Boeing 737-500 and 232 Boeing 737-700 - a total fleet of 451 aircraft. In the last decade, the fleet increased to 712 aircraft, and its current fleet is: 116 Boeing 737-300, 10 Boeing 737-500, Boeing 737-700 and 476 110 Boeing 737-800.
We can say that Southwest is also a contradictory company in the history of 737 and also Boeing. She created a demand totally out the standards that Boeing wanted for the 737 Classic , the aircraft should be equipped with a cockpit very similar to the 737 original, very different when compared to Glass Cockpit Boeing designed for the Classic version .
