Airline Name
Southwest Air Lines
IATA: NU / ICAO: SWU / Callsign: NANSEI
Country of Origin
Aircraft Types Used (from those available in WoA)
DHC-6 Twin Otter (DHC6) - Registration: JA8790 / JA8808 - Operated: 4
B737-2Q3/Adv (B732) - Registration: JA8475 - Operated: 10
B767-246 (B762) - Registration: JA8231 - Operated: 1
B767-346 (B763) - Registration: JA8267 - Operated: 2
Aircraft Types Not in Game
NAMC YS-11 (YS11) - Registration: JA8794 - Operated: 2
Convair 240-3 (CVLP) - Registration: JA5125
Why should this airline be added?
Founded in 1967, Southwest Air Lines (SWAL) was a Japanese airline with its operations around the city of Naha in the Okinawa Prefecture, initially starting operations throughout the Japanese islands of Ryukyu with a single Convair 240.SWAL added new aircrafts to replace the aging flee and was also planning to launch mainland Japan service, adding the Boeing 737-200 to fly to Osaka, Nagoya and Tokyo-Haneda. Eventually more demand from the mainland to the small island chain led SWAL to add widebody aircraft like the Boeing 767-200 & 767-300 to their fleet within the late 1980s, with the widebodies operating the long-haul legs to mainland Japan and the Boeing 737s were transferred to the island’s more popular intra-Prefecture routes from Naha.
In the 1990s, Japan Airlines and All Nippon Airways was heavily invested in the market and with SWAL being a successful regional carrier, merger offers soon began arriving, with SWAL agreeing to Japan Airlines to takeover a 50% stake in the carrier, with the airline changing its name to Japan Transocean Air and becoming part of the JAL fleet.