twangster

This announcement may be part of the fishing for a creditor process.

Granted I haven't flown SWA this year but I don't think they had a lot of issues related to the open seating. Many flights were full so saving an empty seat was pointless - those in C group are gonna sit somewhere. With dozens of flights on SWA I never saw any truly outrageous conflict, fights or issues stemming from open seating. I believe this is entirely a cash grab. Like Air Canada most fares won't include the ability to pick a seat. Want to pick a seat? Which credit card do you want to use? The old trick of buying one EBCI seat to secure space for two or more isn't going to work anymore. Now, you wanna sit together? The whole group has to pay to pick a seat. I also read they are implementing their version of premium economy likely with another 3 to 4 inches of pitch. Another money grab. SWA has watched other legacy carrier cash in on premium upgrades while offering no frills fares with no perks which is what SWA was... Wanna Get Away? The airline industry has made air travel so miserable they can now charge for upgrades to make it even just a little bit better. On the legacy carriers that starts with paying to pick a seat, grows into pay for a few inches more legroom and culminates with forget your travel blues and splurge for first class. SWA is simply playing catch up on the fees game.

Sounds about right. Carnival Mardi Gras sails with the nearly the equivalent of an Oasis Class ship but with 80% of the volume. Mardi Gras - 5,282 at double and 6,500 at max capacity in 181k GT. Oasis of the Seas 5,606 at double and 6,699 at max capacity in 227k GT. The passenger space ratio is wildly different between the two. I had no doubt Carnival planned to squeeze them onto this next class.

Get ready for the sauna...

A Long Island Iced Tea sounds like it's in order.

Yay! Is that the Gordie Howe?

My recent SNAFU with Delta had me change flights and connecting cities four times after checking my bag. Despite that my checked luggage made it. I looked out and saw my bag on a cart. They scanned it and didn't like what they saw so it stayed on the cart. Away it went. A few minutes later the cart came back with a few more last minute bags including mine back from it's airport tour. This time they scanned it and liked what they saw. Delta's online bagger tracker stopped working. My airtag told me where my bag was. My luggage made it going west to get east and to a different final airport. So while I still hate Delta now, I do have to give the luggage process kudus for working quite well.

Last plan I saw was a September 23 LA to Tokyo cruise for Ovation getting out town just in time for Quantum to come home.

I would still take any comment by any Captain with a massive dose of sea salt on the side. Captain's routinely sit on conference calls and hear things the company is doing, or looking at doing, or might be doing and in between nodding off and waking back up it's easy to blend all of nuances. Royal also likes to leak things that are just not going to happen to get the competition spun up. Until it's officially announced Captain announcements are just slightly more valuable than FB posts and almost as easy to come by. I'll never forget the Anthem Captain that boldly announced Symphony would be a stretched Oasis class ship and much larger.

The investor call is for RCG - the parent company. They tend not to delve deep into one brand's potential new ship projects on such a call. Instead they would make general announcements that are non-committal and apply across the brands such as "more new ships are being considered for the future"

Early azipods were new technology in their day. Carnival must have been bitten early on or simply decided the innovation wasn't worth it. Just like the decision to cancel Project Pinnacle, more of the same, no change, low risk seems to be Carnival's approach. Why change? We are making lots of money...

High demand means higher prices are coming.

That's a lot of walking for the ATS Genies.

To be fair they tried them on a small ship in the 90's but didn't adopt them for Conquest class which are the Voyager and Freedom class era of ships. They used them on their Spirit class but refrained from using them on the Dream class relegating azipods to smaller ships only until Vista in 2016.

Carnival must be absolutely kicking themselves. It's only taken ~20 years for them to acknowledge their mistake. Back around the turn of the century they decided mega ships would never work. Around the same time Royal created the concept of Project Genesis now known as Oasis class and then Royal actually built it. Meanwhile Carnival kept on building medium sized ships and avoided azipods for decades more. Carnival had a mega ship concept, then cancelled it. Cute name don't you think?