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If only they could quickly get high quantities immediately, I'm sure they would switch in a heartbeat.

Part of Southwest's competitive advantage has been that the vast majority of their aircraft use the same platform which simplifies training of crew and maintenance of aircraft.

Switching to Airbus would necessitate complete retraining of thousands of people and would increase costs at least in the short term substantially.

Luckily, they can look at AS post VX merger as a good example of how to integrate A320s into an all 737 fleet. So while they will absolutely have costs, they may be able to bring in folks who've done it before.

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