We’ve just published the March, 2009 schedule, so Southwest is now accepting reservations all the way out until May 8, 2009. Whether you want some Florida sun to chase away the late Winter chill, or feel like some early Spring slaloming down the slopes in the Rockies or the Cascades, you can book your trip now at southwest.com.
As usual in any new schedule, we’ve got some exciting things in this schedule that I want to tell you about. Exciting thing number one: MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL! Southwest starts service to “the T.C.” (the Twin Cities, to those not in the “know!”) on March 8, 2009, with eight weekday roundtrips between the Hubert Humphrey Terminal at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Int’l. Airport and Chicago’s close-in, uncongested Midway Airport. Not only will we be bringing convenient schedules and the best Customer Service in the skies to the Minneapolis/St. Paul-Chicago market, we’re celebrating our arrival with a fare sale! Besides our nonstop service to Chicago out of MSP, we’re leveraging our extensive service from Chicago and offering direct and/or connecting service to a whopping 56 other Southwest destinations. As always, you can get all the details on schedules, fares, and fare rules by visiting southwest.com!
Exciting thing number two: we’ve re-optimized the schedule again, and we’re using our new ability to respond to seasonal traffic shifts by changing in market frequencies. We’re making changes in a lot of markets, in fact—out of the more than 400 roundtrip, nonstop markets Southwest serves, the March 2009 schedule contains changes in over a quarter of them. Besides the new service to MSP, we’re re-introducing nonstop service between Birmingham and Phoenix, and adding more flights in 62 other nonstop markets around our network. Of course, with schedule additions come schedule reductions. Thirty-three markets will see relatively minor schedule reductions, while we will eliminate nonstop service in two roundtrip markets (Albuquerque-Amarillo and El Paso-Lubbock). However, even in those two markets, we’ll still offer connecting service so that our Customers can stay…well…”connected!” To see the entire list of frequency changes by market, click on the link at the bottom of this blog post (under attachments).
Exciting thing number three: this is the first schedule co-written by one of Schedule Planning’s newest colleagues, Sara. Sara’s been with Southwest for more than a decade, first serving as a Customer Service Agent in Baltimore/Washington and Las Vegas before making the move to the Technology Department in 2006—and then moving to Schedule Planning in March of this year. Sara is also one of the more than 2,300 Southwest Employees who is married to another Southwest Employee (her husband, Lin, is a Southwest Airlines Dispatcher). Great job on the schedule, Sara—and, I’m sure, the first of many!
Happy booking, everyone—and stay tuned. We’ve got some other exciting developments in upcoming schedules I’ll be blogging about. You never know what we have up our sleeve!
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Comments
We LUV that New City Smell!!!!!!!
Congrats Bill, and all of Schedule Planning, for all you do to keep us profitable, and the choice for Customer travel.
Every time you talk about the balancing act of scheduling over 500 aircraft to our 60+ cities, I remember the guy on the Ed Sullivan show, spinning plates on the top of wooden dowels.
WHEW!!
OK I gotta admit I am a DIE HARD Southwest Fan...for many reasons (great customer service, great fares, great cabin crews, great on time performance, great frequent flier program, etc).
I love you guys! But I am EXTREMELY unhappy about what just happened when the new fares were released.
I have been on the site constantly this mornnig, waiting for the fares to be released for Spring Break. My DD and I are taking the 3 kids (14, 17, 18) on their first ever cruise and first vacation in 5 years)! So for the past 2 months I have been waiting and watching UA/AA/DL and all the others as their fares went higher and higher...But I was smug in knowing that when the fares were relased I would be ready and would get a great fare. we are going from Chicago to Ft Lauderdale.
Given the current state of the economy we really were not sure if we were even going to go, but we are going to try to cut back on other things to give this to my kids and my mom. We are celebrating my 50th, my mom's 75th, my son's 18th and HS graduation.
I flew thru the first page, putting in the destinaton / dates / and number of passengers. So imagine my surprise when the fare page came up...NO $89 each way fare, NO cheaper fares...nope...I am paying $493 each for 5 tickets. I could absolutely cry. Where there even any seats at the lowest fare or even the next lowest fare?
Now before anyone flames me, please understand that I work in travel. A loooong time ago I even owned my own agency. Now I am a Travel Coordinator for a college. And I use Southwest for about 70% of our air travel.
I bought the tickets very reluctantly...knowing that I could have saved $750 to $1200 if I had not been a loyal passenger. I won't make that mistake again. I truly do feel like maybe those cheaper fares were not ever even there or if they were, then they were in a newly limited capacity...infact 3 flights showed completely sold out at the 'wanna get a way' rate. (remember this was less than 20 seconds from the flights being available)
I am very very sad.
j
I see that Nashville is seeing further cuts in its long time west coast service and in fact not re-gaining any that will be lost in January while Birmingham is getting back Phoenix. That's disappointing. Don't understand why we're increasingly losing our nonstop options and frequencies for places like those and New York in favor of connections in Baltimore, Midway, and Denver which had already with everyone else. I realize that everybody wants to deny that our schedule has stopped growing in the last two or three years and started to shrink but that's what it looks like to me. This is strange considering that Nashville is attracting new business and growing.
Hey Bill,
Southwest Cities does not have MSP on it and it doesn't show up in the Interactive Route Map on southwest.com.
I was just at the Mall of America meeting Southwest just had this morning and have some pictures if you want them.
I must say that I am a little disappointed that Pittsburgh - Philadelphia is losing yet another frequency. I really don't want to have to fly US Airways when I need to stay in town later than the Southwest 5:50 p.m. return.
Great news to see expansion into the MSP market and DEN market.
Please start service to Dayton, OH (DAY). Hey, don't laugh! We need low fares out west.
I'm sure this is high on your list....LOL
Please continue your careful, thought out expansion so we may enjoy your service and low fares for many years to come.
I recall reading more than once that Southwest will only serve a city if it can support at least six departures per day. Otherwise it can’t be profitable. Looking over the changes per market I notice that Corpus Christie will have only five flights. Has the formula changed?
Also even with the reductions it appears that you will be adding aircraft. How many?
I have been so jealous of cities with access to Southwest Airlines after reading and hearing about your amazing Brand and Purpose (Democratize the Skies) during a presentation from Haley Rushing last week at the Society for Word of Mouth conference (Austin, TX). And now you announce you're coming to the Twin Cities! Halleluiah! Thank you for helping relieve us from (the Wicked Witch of the) Northwest!!!
Janet, what you experienced is not at all unusual. When it comes to peak holiday flights, Southwest knows they are going to sell out at relatively high fares, so you will almost never see a deep discount. Spring Break to Florida, probably flying on Friday and Sunday although you don't specify, certainly qualifies as peak. Those flights WILL sell out.
Legacy airlines often sell cheap fares months ahead for these peak holidy flights. This seems to be foolish on the part of the legacy airlines, but you might as well take advantage of it. But don't blame Southwest. The apparent fact that legacy airlines are making a bad business decision doesn't mean Southwest should copy them.
The moral of this story is to buy your Wednesday and Sunday Thanksgiving tickets from a legacy airline if you are certain you won't need to change anything or cancel the trip.
Since you have bought Southwest tickets, I strongly suggest that you re-price your itinerary 12 weeks before travel, then 8 weeks, 6 weeks, 4 weeks, and 3 weeks. You won't ever get a Ding fare for a peak holiday date like this, but if sales are slower than expected the lower-fare "buckets" may open up.
Also: be sure to check availability for one seat only! If you ask for 4 tickets and the lower bucket has only 3 left, you won't get any of those 3. You'll get all 4 at the higher price. It's a system limitation.
Buy one seat at a time if the price is better that way. Southwest gives you a 24-hour period during which you can cancel for a full refund if you used a credit card to pay. So if you find a cheaper seat or two, you can just rebook today and cancel the old reservation and request the refund.
The FAQ on FlyerTalk has all this information and much, much more: http://flyerguide.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Southwest_Rapid_Rewards
nsx at flyertalk.com's Southwest forum
Bill and Sara,
Great job, y'all! I can't even imagine the enormity of what you folks do, or how you manage to do it, but one thing I know for sure is that y'all are AWESOME!! (inside scoop for Will -- I've looked through the doors into Bill's domain, and in fact, they ARE spinning 65 plates on the end of a buncha sticks!!)
The phones were so busy in Res with the new release that people were calling CR to book flights, and the CR phone reps were so busy, they asked the CR writers to pitch in and help. Wow, folks were excited!
Thanks for all that you do,
Kim :-)
Customer Relations Blog Boy
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