Nuts About Southwest

Queue the background sounds of the teletype, and then in your best "newsman voice" read the copy:

THIS JUST IN: SOUTHWEST PLANS TO START SERVICE TO BOSTON LOGAN INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT LATER THIS YEAR!

It’s true! We intend to add a third new city to our expanding route network in 2009, and this time it's Boston!

Of course….calling Boston a "new" city for Southwest is a little misleading. It certainly will be a new airport—but Southwest has actually served the Boston area for over a decade. We started with service to Providence, Rhode Island, in October 1996, and expanded our coverage of the metropolitan Boston area less than two years later by adding service to Manchester, New Hampshire, in the summer of 1998. We now have nearly 60 daily departures from the Boston area to nonstop destinations all over our network, with direct and connecting service to darn near every airport we serve. Our arrival in Boston later this year will complement that service so that travelers have several ways to choose Southwest from their favorite New England airport.

This isn’t news, of course, but Boston has always been dear to our heart—we’ve been affiliated with the Boston Celtics for many years, so you guys KNOW us! So when we finally land at Logan—it’s going to be like the many scenes from the iconic sitcom set in Boston, “Cheers” when Norm walks into the bar.  When we start serving Logan—we’re thinking everyone will shout “HELLO, SOUTHWEST!”
 

Even with the addition of a third new city, we still plan to rein in our usual aggressive growth this year.  We’re able to capture new business in new Southwest markets by use of our schedule optimizer, which gives us the ability to develop schedules that improve our product and yet stay nimble and able to respond to market changes.

We’ll announce where we’ll fly from Logan, and all of the other cool details, later. But for now—thanks for your support, and we’re working hard to make our network EVER more efficient to get y’all from where you are to where you want to be—and back! 

Be sure and listen to the newest Red Belly Radio episode about our new Boston service.