Southwest’s schedule is really “out there!” Today we’re putting our schedule out for sale from August 13th through September 30th which (obviously!) includes the Labor Day Holiday period.
This schedule’s design reflects the annual, seasonal shift from what we expect to be a really busy spring and a WAY busy summer into a slightly more normal ‘bucolic’ fall. Compared to the summer ’11 schedule, we’re going from a June/July peak of 3,484 daily departures to a slightly lower 3,310 daily nonstops. We’re following the expected seasonal softening of demand by reducing 91 roundtrip flights spread throughout the network. Our flying fleet remains essentially flat, and we end seasonal nonstops in three roundtrip markets—Baltimore/Washington-Seattle/Tacoma, Nashville-Providence, and Kansas City-Ft. Lauderdale. Besides those three markets, we’ll slightly reduce frequency in 83 other roundtrip markets, with no markets experiencing a reduction of more than 2 roundtrip nonstops.
The good news is that we’re adding a brand new nonstop market, Denver-Burbank, with two weekday nonstops! This marks the fifth of our Southern California airports that we’ve linked with nonstop service to our Mile High Powerhouse. We’re also shifting one of our eight weekday Denver-LAX flights to Orange County, which will give us four daily John Wayne-Denver roundtrips. At Chicago/Midway we’re also adding a seventh roundtrip between Chicago/Midway and Philadelphia. All the nitty-gritty details are in the attached .PDF file, and I will be watching to respond to comments.
Happy booking, folksl There are fun, cool, and interesting things in the future!
This schedule’s design reflects the annual, seasonal shift from what we expect to be a really busy spring and a WAY busy summer into a slightly more normal ‘bucolic’ fall. Compared to the summer ’11 schedule, we’re going from a June/July peak of 3,484 daily departures to a slightly lower 3,310 daily nonstops. We’re following the expected seasonal softening of demand by reducing 91 roundtrip flights spread throughout the network. Our flying fleet remains essentially flat, and we end seasonal nonstops in three roundtrip markets—Baltimore/Washington-Seattle/Tacoma, Nashville-Providence, and Kansas City-Ft. Lauderdale. Besides those three markets, we’ll slightly reduce frequency in 83 other roundtrip markets, with no markets experiencing a reduction of more than 2 roundtrip nonstops.
The good news is that we’re adding a brand new nonstop market, Denver-Burbank, with two weekday nonstops! This marks the fifth of our Southern California airports that we’ve linked with nonstop service to our Mile High Powerhouse. We’re also shifting one of our eight weekday Denver-LAX flights to Orange County, which will give us four daily John Wayne-Denver roundtrips. At Chicago/Midway we’re also adding a seventh roundtrip between Chicago/Midway and Philadelphia. All the nitty-gritty details are in the attached .PDF file, and I will be watching to respond to comments.
Happy booking, folksl There are fun, cool, and interesting things in the future!
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| august_2011_weekday_flight_changes.pdf | 247 KB |
Comments
Hi!! I need to book flights November 3-10 & have been looking for the schedule to open up. Any idea when I should expect this?
So far only a few airlines offer these dates. I am leery to book with "D----" now b/c I LOVE Southwest and hope I can find the best price and schedule with YOU!
Any advice on how long I should wait would be great!!!!
When will you be flying into Portland Maine? I keep searching for this info. Everytime I fly back home (Maine) If I take SouthWest, I fly into Manchester, NH and drive the rest of the way - not much fun. Most of the time, I just take Delta because overall it's cheaper (than renting a car and driving). So - please hurry and fly to maine! :)
I looked at the new schedule and, once again, ISP is taking another hit. When SWA first began flying out of ISP some 10 years ago, they started with 80 flights a day and ISP was ranked the 78th busiest airport in the country. Then American left, followed by Delta and Continental. SWA pretty much owns the airport now and has continued to cut back service and raise fares. ISP is not even in the top 150 busest airports and with the new schedule, SWA cancelled another 3 flights(dropping the total number of departures to 21 per day from a high of 80). Thanks for ruining a once great airport....please leave!
If Midway and BWI are experiencing such bottle necks then why not give Nashville travelers N/S to Boston, New York, DC, and MSP. These along with Charlotte and Atlanta are big business travel markets that have supported/do support N/S service on other airlines but can be reached on our largest carrier, SW, without connecting.
DO NOT FLY SOUTHWEST! Their customer service dept. is extremely unhelpful and rude! If you're looking for an airline to go out of their way to help you with a special circumstance Southwest isn't it. My fiance and I are getting married in Vegas and mistakenly booked our flights through SW. She called them today to confirm details about carrying her (very expensive & irreplacable) wedding dress on the flight as they told us before we booked our flights it would be no problem and could put it in the captain's closet, well now they're telling us that's not possible. They can't guarantee anything, they said now that we may have to check it which is unacceptable because we can't risk them losing it. It won't fit in the overhead compartments. The early bird check-in doesn't guarantee anything either. So basically everything we were told before booking was a lie and now we're stuck taking our chances with UPS or Fedex. Oh and this is after we had told our entire wedding party to book their flights through SW, about 15 tickets were bought because of us.
How do we book flights on SWA to Mexico. Heard there is a codeshare thru Volaris
Hi Dave! You can book right on our air booking page on southwest.com. You can also do that here and find more info on our partnership with Volaris: http://bit.ly/eb7m5r
Hope that helps!
The photo of the sky with the clouds is stunning but. The dark background and the grey letters make for hard reading, especially the first three or four paragraphs. Once the copy hits the black background the legability improves. With the new improved format of Nuts About Southwest, this is the only area that appears to be a problem.
when will you be flying into Portland, Maine? I heard with Southwest's takeover of ATA this would be happening? I can't wait for that. The drive to Maine from either Manchester or Boston is too long and takes too much time! Thanks for your response.
I believe that the takeover, as you put it, is not one that involves ATA. If you go to http://www.southwest.com/ you will see that Southwest is in the process to "acquire" AirTran Airways. I would not call it a "takeover" by any measure. The Airline formerly known as ATA was an airline that Southwest had a "codeshare" agreement in place with prior to a bankruptcy filing by American Trans Air, or ATA for short. While one my read deeply into AirTran Airways, as ATA, let me and the Southwest Blog Team be clear that AirTran Airways is in no way. shape or form, ATA. Thank you for the opportunity to blog at http://www.blogsouthwest.com/.
Sincerely,
Mike Barnbaum, Rapid Rewards Member in Sacramento, California (SMF)