And now the major carriers are proposing mergers that will reduce the number of viable carriers to three or four if the mergers are allowed to happen. It also does not enter a market that does not fit its criteria, and it never, ever, hurries itself along its charted path. We are not presently on that path because our service area is too small and because Southwest serves Midway Airport in Chicago, Indianapolis International and Detroit Metropolitan Airport. To date people have been willing to drive to one or another of these airports to avail themselves of Southwest's service. One day in the future Southwest may have the planes, the slots into the larger airports and the crews to enable themselves to serve smaller, intermediate markets such as ours.
All airlines have plans.
It takes every airline a certain amount of time to react to a change in an airport's air service situation. No airline has spare airplanes, slots or crew just sitting around waiting to provide new or additional service to an airport, even if it makes all the fiscal sense in the world. Therefore, when new service does come, it is a sign that there is indeed a market for it. We must not forget the service that we do have, and how lucky we are to have it given our proximity to the huge airports with mega-service in the Chicago area. I don't know of one other airport our size that has that kind of service anywhere in the country.