This morning Southwest began accepting reservations for the January 9 - March 12, 2010 date range.
First---we're beginning new nonstop flights between St. Louis and two of our very newest destinations. Southwest will add service on January 10th in the Boston-St. Louis and Minneapolis/St. Paul-St. Louis markets, both with two daily roundtrips each. Not only are these markets very strong in and of themselves, they'll also make it much easier for travelers between Dallas and both Boston and the Twin Cities. This will bring us up to 13 daily departures to three nonstop destinations (Chicago/Midway, Denver, and St. Louis) from the Hubert Humphrey Terminal at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, and 12 weekday departures to three nonstop destinations (Baltimore/Washington, Chicago/Midway, and St. Louis) from Terminal E at Boston/Logan!
Second, we're making numerous seasonal adjustments in market frequency. In all, we're reducing frequency by one flight in 92 markets. We're also adding service in another 42 markets. What this accomplishes is eliminating service that is not expected to perform well during a very slow time of the year, as well as adding service for which this is the busy season. Of course, we'll continually monitor our service levels to make sure we're matching capacity with demand.
And third....in the "double your pleasure/double your workload" department....for the first time ever, Schedule Planning actually split the Winter schedule for 2010 into two, completely separate work efforts. By using two totally separate capacity sets, we were able to use our schedule optimizer to create two separate schedule bases--one that is more reflective of anticipated traffic in the January timeframe (which is historically exceptionally weak) and one that is a tad bit more robust for the Mid-February to mid-March period, which is noticeably busier. So, in addition to seeing more service in many markets effective February 10th, you'll also notice that departure times in most markets will change on that day--some by just a few minutes, some by several hours. We're doing this based on historical time-of-day demand information, with the goal (always!) of matching our flights to the needs of our Customers in a way that's....well....optimal!!
Enjoy our new schedules and new service, gang...and here's hoping everyone has a safe and happy Labor Day!
Comments
Unable to make plans past January at this time. Website is going back and forth between letting you in past Jan. 8 and March 12. System seems stable
Sorry, everyone--we had network problems at almost the EXACT moment we were planning to open the schedule. Everything should be loaded and up and running now.
Ah, computers.....
Bill
It's nice to see Southwest expand at MSP. I wish you could have added St. Louis before the Thanksgiving rush. Also, any chance on adding a Florida city or two from MSP? People in Minneapolis like to go south where it's warm in the winter.
Great idea adding STL to MSP's destinations. Some time ago I had read a blog entry where the person suggested that weather connections in DEN and MDW can be iffy at times and that another non-stop destination would help. Made sense to me and just in time for winter.
Thanks for adding direct service from DAL-MSP! How come there is no direct service in the opposite direction? Can we expect to see more non-stop service from MSP for Spring Break?
Are you going to upload a PDF of which routes were effected (which routes had service decreased or increased)? Always interesting to look at...
Sad to lose MHT-PHX, even temporarily. The worry up here in Manchester is that every addition at Boston will come at our expense. I do know we've done very well for Southwest and the numbers bear that out.
With Southwest going to Logan, watch Jet Blue come to Manchester. A good swap for Manchester.
I am happy to see WN add another route to Boston already! I think that a BOS-LAX route would work for WN. There would be some competition with B6,AA,UA,VX but with the low fares and the service that Southwest provides I think that would make that route sucessful.
with southwest going to logan and now adding flights ,and taking away from manchester, could
be the start of the end of southwest in manchester and providence. why cant southwest just tell both airports that they are going to flying out of boston logan for all its flights, there is no way it will continue to fly out of all 3 airports. best thing for the officials at manchester is talk to other airlines to fly out of manchester like jetblue, if southwest does not want manchester then pay for the higher fees massport charges and see how fast you profits go.
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