LUV vs XPO Comparison

Southwest Airlines is the largest domestic air carrier in the United States by passengers boarded. Southwest operates nearly 800 aircraft in an all-Boeing 737 fleet. Despite offering some longer routes and a few perks for business travelers, the airline predominantly specializes in short-haul, leisure flights operated in a single, open-seating cabin configuration in a point-to-point network. In late 2025, Southwest will modify its cabins to offer some rows with extra legroom and will update its ticketing process and merchandising to offer assigned seats and more fare categories, including a basic economy class that will more directly compete with other airlines' offerings and appear for the first time in travel aggregators' search results.

Following the spinoff of its contract logistics division (GXO) in 2021 and freight brokerage operations (RXO) in 2022, XPO is moving closer to becoming a pure-play asset-based less-than-truckload carrier. We estimate LTL shipping makes up 60% of total revenue, with XPO's European truckload and LTL operations making up 40%. However, XPO's LTL segment EBITDA mix is much higher than 60%. We believe XPO intends to divest its European trucking division once it finds the right buyer.