Denver -- Southwest, which is still waiting on FAA approval to begin its much-anticipated Hawaii service, won't schedule flights until that regulatory process is over, chief revenue officer Andrew Watterson said.
The carrier has said that it will fly to Hawaii from Oakland, San Jose, Sacramento and San Diego. Specific routes haven't been announced, but its Hawaii destinations will be Honolulu, Maui the Big Island and Kauai. Southwest also plans to offer inter-island service.
The attention the plans are getting has irked at least one Southwest competitor.
"We get asked a lot about Southwest right now, which has done a masterful job of getting a lot of column inches in various publications by announcing very little," Hawaiian Airlines CEO Peter Ingram said in May.
Speaking Monday at the International Aviation Forecast Summit at Denver's downtown Hyatt Regency, Watterson said he hopes airlines will continue to voice aggravation about the lack of information Southwest has revealed.
"I'm going to continue to needle my competitors and hope that they'll complain and talk about it, so we'll get free advertising," he said.
Nobody remembers when a new air service starts, Watterson added, but people remember if the launch gets screwed up.
Southwest is working through the process of getting Extended Operations Service (Etops) authorizations from the FAA for each of the Boeing 737 Max 8 and 737-800 aircraft it intends to use for Hawaii service.