Southwest Airways is making some extra notable changes to its community.
This time, the Dallas-based airline is including 4 routes to its winter schedule. Although the airline introduced these flights as “new routes,” none are technically new since they’ve all been operated in recent times, based on TPG’s evaluation of Cirium schedules.
Southwest’s added routes embrace:
- Miami to Columbus, Ohio (final operated in January 2022)
- Miami to Pittsburgh (final operated in April 2022)
- Chicago — particularly, Halfway Worldwide Airport (MDW) — to Palm Springs, California (final operated in January 2022)
- West Palm Seashore, Florida, to Windfall (final operated in April 2023)
The 4 new routes will start Jan. 7, 2025, and they’re clearly geared toward transporting vacationers from cold-weather cities to hotter pastures through the peak of winter. The brand new flights are already out there to ebook.
Need extra aviation information? Join TPG’s free biweekly Aviation e-newsletter.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and instantly after its peak, this tried-and-true technique of taking winter-weary, leisure-focused vacationers to California and Florida proved very fashionable amongst U.S. airways.
That mentioned, in latest months, there’s been some softness in income and bookings to many of those standard leisure locations resulting from overcapacity. As such, it will be attention-grabbing to see how Southwest fares in these markets through the upcoming winter season.
It isn’t all excellent news for Southwest’s community or the airline’s flyers, although. Over the weekend, the airline filed plans to droop 11 routes through the winter months, as first seen by TPG in Cirium schedules and later confirmed by a service spokesperson.
Each day E-newsletter
Reward your inbox with the TPG Each day e-newsletter
Be a part of over 700,000 readers for breaking information, in-depth guides and unique offers from TPG’s consultants
Under is the total checklist of affected routes. Lots of them have traditionally been operated as soon as weekly.
- Atlanta to San Diego
- Chicago to Rochester, New York
- Dallas to Philadelphia
- Fort Lauderdale to Montego Bay, Jamaica
- Lengthy Seashore, California, to Colorado Springs, Colorado
- Miami to New Orleans
- Nashville to Oakland, California
- Nashville to San Jose, California
- Oakland to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
- Orlando to Chicago
- Orlando to El Paso, Texas
Southwest instructed TPG that these are “seasonal suspensions,” which means that the airline plans to fly them once more sooner or later. Nevertheless, the airline hasn’t printed any resumption dates, so we’ll have to observe if the service follows via on its phrase.
“We’re at all times monitoring journey tendencies and adjusting schedules to assist our Clients, Workers, and operations,” Southwest mentioned in a press release in regards to the suspensions.
Over the previous few months, Southwest has made a slew of adjustments to its community centered on boosting profitability. It dropped 4 cities altogether: Bellingham, Washington; Cozumel, Mexico; Syracuse, New York; and Houston — particularly, George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH). It additionally exited six different routes.
Earlier this yr, Southwest even minimize a preferred Hawaii route: Los Angeles to Maui.
The upside is that these cuts have allowed Southwest to search out pockets of demand in different markets. The airline added 11 new routes in April and Might, and it even unveiled a prolonged roster of one-off flights for the upcoming NFL season.
All of those community changes come because the airline is making monumental adjustments to the passenger expertise. This month, Southwest introduced that it could abandon its open seating coverage in favor of assigned seats beginning within the coming months.
Southwest will even set up premium extra-legroom seats, and it will launch red-eye flights subsequent yr.
Associated studying:
