Southwest Airlines 737-500 cabin photo

Southwest Airlines Boeing 737-500 En Route From PDX To MDW, originally uploaded by flypdx.

A Boeing 737-500 for Southwest Airlines en route from Portland International Airport (PDX) to Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW).
Fleet:
Southwest currently operates 541 Boeing 737 jets (as of March 31, 2010).
Seats
137
122
137

The Company’s fleet has an average age of approximately 10.5 years.
The average aircraft trip length is 633 miles with an average duration of one hour and 54 minutes.
Southwest aircraft fly an average of 6.5 flights per day, or almost 12 hours and 15 minutes per day.
Southwest was the launch customer for the Boeing 737-700 in 1997. Southwest was also a launch customer for the Boeing 737-500 and -300 series aircraft.
Southwest recently completed updating its original color scheme of gold, red and orange paint with the addition of Canyon Blue. Three Next-Generation Boeing 737 aircraft will continue flying with a commemorative livery of Desert Gold to honor the carrier’s original three cities—Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.
Performance-enhancing Blended Winglets have been added to our fleet of 737-700s, and all new 737-700 aircraft arrive from Boeing with Blended Winglets installed. Additionally, Southwest began installation of Blended Winglets on some of our 737-300 aircraft in early 2007. Approximately 90 -300 aircraft have been retrofitted with Blended Winglets as of the end of third quarter 2009; an additional 12 -300 aircraft are expected to be retrofitted by mid-2010.
Southwest tested Wi-Fi on four of our airplanes, and in late 2009, we made the decision to begin installing satellite-delivered broadband from our Wi-Fi provider, Row 44, on the rest of our fleet. We currently estimate that our entire fleet will be Wi-Fi enabled in the first half of 2012.