Somewhere, something has "frozen over."

Today, for the first time in our 35-year history, Southwest Airlines began selling revenue tickets between Dallas' Love Field and Los Angeles; between Dallas and Chicago; between Dallas and La$ Vega$; between Dallas and Orlando, and between Dallas and Phoenix, plus 20 other cities spread all across our nationwide network.  In all, Southwest now gives travelers the Freedom to Fly between Dallas and 43 cities from sea to shining sea-always, of course, with low fares and Positively Outrageous Service!  Many of you (particularly those of you who live here in the Metroplex area, as well as all 32,000 of us in the Southwest Airlines Family) know about the highly public and heated struggle to get the outdated and anti-competitive Wright Amendment repealed.  To those of you who joined in the battle, a hearty THANK YOU.  We couldn't have done it without EVERYONE'S support!

However, there was a great deal of preparation that was done, very much in the background, over the past 12 to 18 months to get ready for today.  For example, many of the systems that are used to essentially run our airline had been "hard coded" to prevent the display or sale of itineraries that violated the Wright Amendment-after all, it was a federal law, and many of us don't look very good in black-and-white stripes.  In order to fix this, many of our operational departments-with the invaluable help of our incredible Technology group-spent long hours changing and testing our systems to enable them to handle this historic change.

The good folks in our Revenue Management and Pricing group have been busily getting fares ready to publish in the new Dallas markets so that Customers could purchase tickets as soon as the ink was dry on the legislation.  You'll be happy to know that, despite what other airlines have charged the traveling public to fly to or from Dallas, on Southwest our highest one-way fare between Big D and any of the 43 destinations we're serving from Dallas will be $319, plus taxes and passenger facility charges.  No longer do last-minute travelers between Dallas and the East or West Coasts have to mortgage their homes for same-day travel!

Here in the Schedule Planning Department, we've been in our usual "stealth mode" preparing for the phased-out demise of the Wright Amendment.  For about a year now, at each of the five major schedule changes that we process and publish each year we've been changing the schedule, a little bit here and a little bit there, to make sure that when the law was modified Southwest Airlines would be well-positioned to make as much of our network accessible to Dallas as possible.  We've also been slowly, and quietly, adding service between Dallas and existing service points such as Albuquerque, St. Louis, and New Orleans so that when we "flipped the switch" on these new itineraries, they would be as quick and convenient for our Customers as possible.  As a result, I'm very pleased to report that, for each of the new markets we've just opened up to and from Dallas, our Customers will have to stop no more than once!  And even better, many of those new itineraries don't even require that you get off the plane.  For example-want to fly from Phoenix to Dallas?  We've now got six flights each business day on which you'll stop once on the way, but never have to leave your seat until you reach Big D.  In addition, we've also got four convenient one-stop connections in the market, giving you a total of ten daily ways to LUV your way from the Valley of the Sun to the Metroplex.  And we're not done yet.  Even though the compromise won't allow us to add any new nonstop destinations from Dallas until 2014, Schedule Planning will continue to "tweak" the schedule making Dallas more and more convenient to the rest of the nation. 

So as of Thursday (October 19)--air travel to and from Dallas just got a whole lot easier.  With the 94 new travel options that went on sale today for travel on October 19 and beyond, Dallas Love Field is now just one stop away from 43 destinations in America!  And one quick stop can be a good thing.  After all, one stop means you get an extra coke, one more bag of peanuts, (both at no charge!) and just that many more smiles from the friendliest Flight Crews in the sky!  Thanks for your support....thanks for your hard work....and thanks for the VICTORY!