The Dallas-based airline argues the city made several efforts to ensure Southwest would be excluded from the new facility.
SAN ANTONIO — The city of San Antonio is building a new state-of-the art terminal at its international airport, but not everyone is happy about it.
Particularly, Southwest Airlines.
The Dallas-based airline has filed a complaint with the FAA against the city, accusing the city of intentionally excluding them from the new terminal, leaving them in the airport’s “functionally obsolete” Terminal A.
Southwest argues in the suit that internal city documents reveal San Antonio’s “numerous, intentional efforts to hide the fact that its terminal allocation decision was predetermined.”
“Those documents also reveal that the City engineered the process throughout to ensure its desired outcome: excluding Southwest from the City’s planned new facility without addressing significant shortfalls in the existing space in which it intended to leave Southwest, Terminal A, which the City itself has deemed ‘functionally obsolete’ and ‘undersized,” the suit reads.
Southwest says San Antonio explicitly stated its reason for excluding the airline.
“[I]t views Southwest’s passengers as lacking the ‘fit’ and ‘desirability of passenger profile’ to belong in the new terminal, ostensibly because they do not use VIP lounges or book seats in premium aircraft cabins,” the document states.
Southwest argues San Antonio is building the terminal for passengers it prefers, while leaving behind Southwest flyers, who the airline says comprise 37% of the airports passengers.
“All this, while charging Southwest (and, ultimately, its passengers) disproportionately high rates, and attempting to use those fees to subsidize its new facility,” the filing details.
Southwest says the city is additionally trying to leverage the airline into accepting this outcome by imposing punitive charges masked as non-Signatory rates.
The airline argues that, should the FAA not take immediate action holding San Antonio accountable, it would condone its behavior and render meaningless legal protections afforded airport users under law and policy.
“Southwest, with the support of its senior leadership, took every reasonable step to find a solution to this impasse, to no avail,” the suit reads. “Southwest played by the rules when negotiating with the City. It now requests the FAA to require the City to abide by the rules as well.”
The airline says it met with city representatives multiple times at the FAA’s Southwest Region headquarters in Fort Worth last year, but negotiations reached an impasse and ceased, leading to this filing.
Southwest further argues that the city has no plans to render Terminal A, where Southwest is expected to remain, comparable to the rest of the airport’s facilities, and is trying to force the airline to pay for the same rate for an inferior facility.
“The high-volume nature of Southwest’s operation, which depends upon frequent and fast turns of its gates and large volumes of passengers, is uniquely ill-suited to the severe (and unfixable) capacity constraints and Levels of Service deficiencies of Terminal A,” the filing states.
Southwest is asking the FAA to issue the city a compliance order, suspend payment to the city of grant funds until they achieve compliance, as well as cease charging Southwest the amount between Signatory and non-Signatory rates until the city offers the airline a complaint lease and rate structure. The airline is also asking the FAA order San Antonio to refund all fees unlawfully collected by the city.
San Antonio has since filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit. WFAA has reached out to the city for comment but has not heard back as of Wednesday afternoon.
“We are not surprised by the City’s action and anticipated it when we filed our amended complaint, which we believe shows the City of San Antonio’s own documents prove what we have maintained all along: the City assigned gates in the new terminal based on a preference for airlines with first class service and club lounges in violation of federal law,” Southwest said in a statement.
