We've "re-loaded the pipeline!" Today Southwest extended our booking inventory out to May 9, 2008. Take heart, Spring Breakers and Easter Hoppers--you are now free to move around the Country!!!!
As usual, we have a few surprises in store for you in the March - May 2008 Schedule. We're increasing our service in a good number of city pairs in March and April, with a number of brand-new nonstop markets. We'll add new service between Phoenix and San Francisco on March 8, a threesome of new nonstop destinations for Philadelphia (Austin, San Antonio, and St. Louis) on March 17, and brand new nonstops between Denver and San Diego effective April 4. In addition, thirteen other markets will receive additional departures during the March - May time period. To view the entire new service press release, click here.
However, a more interesting story (well...from a Schedule Planning perspective, anyway!) about the March Schedule is our Saturday schedule. It's different than Saturday schedules in the past--really, really different. In fact, it is a completely different animal than the schedule that will operate the other six days of each week, with many Saturday flights operating at a different time than the rest of the week, and with a different flight number. I've blogged about our Schedule Optimization progress over the years, but up until now our schedule has been more or less the same across all seven days of the week. Sure, we've cut back some on Saturday morning and Saturday night flights, and again on Sunday mornings--but the rest of the week looked like seven peas in a pod. However, effective with Saturdays in the March Schedule, we've implemented our first reoptimization within the week. Saturday now has a completely different, and more optimal, set of schedule assumptions than the rest of the week.
How will this impact, and benefit, our Customers? Plenty. Travel patterns are significantly different on weekends, particularly on Saturdays, than they are during the rest of the week--yet because of time constraints we weren't able to "rejigger" the schedule sufficiently to give you a Saturday schedule that closely met your specific travel needs. The new March 2008 Saturday schedule, has been designed, as a whole, to do just that: to get you where you want to go, when you want to go, as conveniently as possible. So, besides better Saturday departure times, we're actually adding a number of new, Saturday-only nonstop markets--between Dallas and Harlingen; Manchester and Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood; Reno and Ontario; San Diego and Salt Lake City; and the big winner in the Saturday-only nonstop free-for-all, is Orlando, which gets Saturday service to Omaha, Salt Lake, Oklahoma City, and Tulsa. In addition, we've added extra Saturday departures in over 50 existing nonstop markets--making it easier for you to get to the weekend destinations you want to visit. You could say that starting next March, Southwest's Saturday schedule will be a real "departure!"
We intend to make this twice-weekly optimization strategy a feature of every published schedule, and as our Company gets used to operating a waaaay different schedule on Saturdays, we might make crank up the volume of Saturday-only nonstop markets to better meet the travel needs of our Customers. And who knows....as we more deeply imbed optimization technology into our scheduling processes, we eventually might be able to optimize each day of the week individually to better match Customer need. Of course, we'll need a LOT more experience to make that work....but we'll keep trying!
Happy booking, everyone....and thanks for reading "Nuts About Southwest!"
Comments
Thank you for the informative article Bill.
As an employee, I love hearing what's in the works. I especially love hearing the words, non-stop out of DAL. You all do an outstanding job trying to keep our Customers happy while keeping Southwest profitable all at the same time.
I bet our Customers are going to LUV the new schedule.
Thanks for all you do! You make us feel proud!
Way To Go Schedule Planning!
"Today Southwest extended our booking inventory out to May 9, 2007."
Or maybe 2008. Or 2009.
Speed,
sorry about the typo. It should be 2008
WHy cant you put a solid miles program in place.
Your new scheduling policies are an EXTREME DISASTER. Good bye Southwest Airlines, you have just destroyed for Rapid Rewards program.
My vacation plans have been ruined. While I have plenty of RR credits there is no inventory for the dates that I wanted to fly on.
Thanks alot.
I am totally disgusted with the new Rapid Rewards system. We had been saving our rapid rewards to take our grandchildren on a vacation - we even paid to have one re-issued. Now we can't use them on many of the Saturday's during the year., unless we are on the "A-list" and they can only be used as a Round-trip award and not divided up. Not to mention the increase in fares. Not only are the rewards useless to us now, but we will probably have to cancel the vacation that we have been planning with the kids for the last 6 months. Our plans can't be moved because of school.
We never had a problem like this with the old system. Why ruin something that customers were so pleased with.
Would be nice to see more cities served from Washington Dulles as well as entering the upper Midwest market. Southwest doesn't serve Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin. Why does southwest avoid that area?
Minneapolis has been rated in the top 10 year after year for number of passengers going in and out of there. Northwest is never on time and Sun Country has horrible hamburgers.
Better yet, maybe Southwest could buy out Sun Country since they use 737's too.
BWAHAHAHAHA
So much for making it better. You just opened past March 7 today. I go and try to book a flight on March 16 within hours of it opening up, I can book a flight for less than $100, but when I go to use awards, i am told no go, but we will gladly take two awards for one flight.
ADIOS SOUTHWEST. I really really hope you get that business traveler you are after, because it just cost you one.
How do i send back the A-list email you sent to me today? You can, "quite literally", take this new plan and shove it....I ain't flying here no more......
Brian, I hope you report you lost a customer instead of gained one!
I have some reqard flights at the end of the year, I have some flights already booked, and will probably have another free ticket (big deal), but after today, all of revenue flights are with Continental, my other hometown airline!
Within a couple of years, you will have your first layoffs ever, you will see your first loss, you will see a decrease in seat miles, and you will struggle like the other majors.
HELLO, you got to be number one worldwide for a reason--great idea to throw away what made that happen.
Like it or not, the price of gas is going up. This is why air fares on ALL the airlines are going up.
It's nice to see you all adding some more connections to and from AUS. I would like to see some more AUS-PIT connections, even if they involve one stop.
How soon, by the way, before Southwest gets all of its gates consolidated at the awful airport in PHL? I had to change there once and had to go out of security and back into security to make the change.
You guys need to add Buffalo to Philadelphia to your network. I fly there about 20-30 times a year and sometimes I get stuck on USAir's turboprops. Yuck. And it seems like I'm always late. You guys can certainly find enough planes for 3-5 daily flights. Please
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