Dallas-Based Southwest Discusses Relocating to Phoenix

Phoenix city officials have met with executives of Southwest Airlines Co. to discuss the low-cost carrier moving its headquarters from Dallas and may soon make a formal offer, Phoenix officials and the airline said.

Southwest executives said several other cities had also approached the airline, which is locked in a dispute about expanding at its home, Dallas’ Love Field. Southwest has declined to identify the other bidding locales.

The airline was miffed last week, when Dallas increased landing fees at Love Field by 57% beginning in April to raise an extra $1 million a year.

Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon spoke with Southwest Chief Executive Gary Kelly by phone about a possible move two weeks ago, and Gordon dropped in last week when city airport officials were having lunch with Southwest representatives, said the mayor’s spokesman, Scott Phelps.

“It wasn’t a hard sell, with PowerPoint presentations and all that,” Phelps said. “He said, ‘If you really want to move, we’ll help you get where you want to go.’ ”

Southwest spokesman Ed Stewart said that Phoenix officials indicated they would make a more formal pitch but that a meeting hadn’t been scheduled.

“They came knocking, saying that ‘we’re a city that knows how to appreciate a good employer, unlike others. Love to sit down and talk about it,’ ” Stewart said.

He said Kelly believed that the airline owed Phoenix “the courtesy to hear you out.”

Southwest is the second-largest operator at Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport, behind US Airways.

Southwest has 4,500 employees in Phoenix and 5,000 in Dallas, including 3,000 at its headquarters just outside the Love Field fence.

This is the second time in four months that Southwest has aired the idea of moving from the city that has been the airline’s home since June 18, 1971, when it served only a few points in Texas.

In October, Chairman Herb Kelleher and company President Colleen Barrett suggested it might make sense for Southwest to relocate because it couldn’t expand at Love Field under a 1979 law barring most long commercial flights from the airport. Southwest’s flights out of Dallas have declined since 2001, and it offers more flights in Phoenix, Las Vegas and Chicago.

However, Kelly quickly quashed the relocation speculation in the fall, saying Southwest was not considering a move.

A few weeks later, Southwest scored a small victory when Congress weakened the 1979 Wright Amendment by allowing flights from Love Field to Missouri.