Even Southwest isn't immune to cuts

When you cover airlines in Charlotte, you learn one thing right away: Some travelers simply won't rest until Southwest Airlines starts flying here.

(Hopefully I've learned a few other things, too, but for the purposes of this post, let's stick with the serious Southwest jones that many folks have.)

It never fails. Write about US Airways' on-time performance, and a reader says Southwest is awesome. Write about new fees being charged by airlines, and a reader says Southwest doesn't do that. And so on and so forth.

This is completely understandable; Southwest is the poster child for doing things differently and having fun while doing it. The Texas-based carrier has looked even better lately because of how they handle fuel. Thanks to locking in lower prices for much of their gas ahead of time, Southwest hasn't been hit as hard as oil prices shot up this year.

Alas, it appears that fuel costs finally may be catching up to Southwest, which announced this week that it's cutting almost 200 flights early next year. That's not nearly as much as other major carriers, but it's definitely a departure from Southwest's image of being insulaed against the high cost of Texas tea. (Or Middle Eastern tea, I guess.)

As for Southwest ever flying into Charlotte, I won't pretend to have great insight into the minds of executives at everyone's favorite low-cost carrier. But it's worth noting that Southwest already flies to Raleigh, and that the airline has a history of targeting markets that aren't hubs or, if they are hubs, are in big markets not so dominated by one airline that Southwest can't make a dent. (See Cleveland, Denver, Detroit, Philadelphia or Washington-Dulles.)

Seeing as how (a) Charlotte isn't as big as any of those markets, (b) US Airways has almost 90 percent of flights here and (c) Raleigh is right down the road, I'll be stunned if Southwest takes a good look at Charlotte anytime soon. Especially with this week's news on flight cuts.