If you had a crystal ball, what would it reveal about where the ­industry will be a year from now?

I’d love to give 10-year projections. The shorter ones are harder. It depends on where fuel prices are, but I think you’ll see fewer airlines. That process has already started, with the airlines that have ceased operations. Consolidation is something that a number of carriers think is a way to salvation. I’m not sure it is, as far as fuel prices are concerned, which is the primary issue. The Delta-Northwest merger is well on its way. They have to jump the regulatory hurdles, and then, of course, you have to work like crazy to make sure it actually works out the way you had planned.

Which carriers are the most vul­nerable to going under?

I never get into that. I don’t want to be a party to a run on the bank.

One of your last official duties as chairman was to testify before Congress about the fine that Southwest had to pay over safety inspections. Some planes were flown after their official F.A.A. inspection dates. What’s your take on that incident?

We reported ourselves to the F.A.A.—that we inadvertently and unintentionally missed these inspections, and the principal inspector said, You’ve got 10 days to do it. There may have been a technical issue, but there was never a safety issue. And there were never any planes that placed passengers at risk. I don’t mean to demean it, but in a sense it was a question of filing the wrong form, so to speak. Boeing said flying the planes was okay, and a former lead investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board said it was okay. There was no threat.

Would you do anything differently?

The appropriate route would have been to go and get an alternative means of compliance from the F.A.A., and I’m quite sure that they would have granted it. That’s what I regret, that we didn’t do that.

That whole issue became political pretty quickly, and in the middle of it, you scrapped plans to outsource some of Southwest’s maintenance to an operation in El Salvador. Why the change?

It was a question of timing. We didn’t say that we would never do it. We just said we’re not going do it now, because we don’t need to add a layer of complications with respect to a new maintainer. Outsourcing is a word that covers a multitude of different concepts, and you have to realize a lot of the talk about it is really a product of union activity, where they’d like to keep the work in the United States. From a safety standpoint, it’s perfectly safe.

Now that you’re stepping down, how much interaction will you have with the company?

Really, what I am here is C.E.O. Gary Kelly’s servant. He is a superb chief executive officer, and I would anticipate that he would ask me from time to time to get involved in some special projects. The dustup with the F.A.A. is an illustration. I really serve at his beck and call.

Is there some innovation that you think could help save this industry? Something on the horizon that you look at with great interest?

Well, no. I don’t think there’s any silver bullet. I think the carriers in the present circumstances are doing exactly what they need to do in order to survive. For the first time in my memory, they’re very busy reducing capacity, which of course will provide fewer seats. That saves fuel, and you’re able to raise fares, I think, fairly substantially. Fewer and fewer people will be flying, and in a sense that’s a sad thing for me. A lot of the American public will be deprived of the opportunity to fly. But I think the carriers have to do it. They don’t have any alternative.