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MARCH SCHEDULE NOW BOOKABLE.....SO GO SOMEWHERE!

Bill
Employee
Employee

Today we started accepting bookings from March 14 through May 7, 2010.  Party on, Spring Break!  Hippity-hop, Easter!  Hello, Passover!  Time to plan a trip and book something.  LET'S GO SOMEWHERE!

We're adding over a hundred weekday flights to our network.   Some airports will see noticeable increases--Chicago gets 21 more daily flights, Baltimore gets 18, Orlando and Tampa each get 9 more flights.  To be clear--we are NOT back into growth mode.  We're able to add all these flights not by adding to our fleet, but by taking advantage of the seasonal decrease in flying time going from Winter into Spring.  You'd be surprised how much extra time an average decrease of five minutes per flight, spread across 3,200 flights a day, can create!

Another interesting fact about our new March-May Schedule is how much more flying we're packing into the Saturday schedule.  Saturday is the air travel equivalent of "Leisure Day," and we're really loading extra leisure-oriented flights into the Saturday schedule.  For example--we're upping Orlando's daily departures from 104 to 129 on Saturdays.  We're going to keep that Disney Express hopping on "Leisure Saturdays!" In fact, we're adding quite a number of Saturday flights to and from our Florida cities, as well as to/from Las Vegas.

As a nod to all of the "schedule geeks" out there--and I say that lovingly, because I am one!--we are publishing not one, but two of the market-based schedule frequency .PDF files on this.  One is for weekday service, the other for Saturday service.  Lots of changes--so enjoy!!!

Happy booking, everyone!

Bill

58 Comments
tucsondave
Explorer C
Could not disagree more with the assertion that somehow Jet Blue is more professional and offers a better product than Southwest. We had a trip from TUS (before they thankfully left that market) to SYR two years ago. It turned into a nightmare. On the outbound portion, the only problem was damage to a suitcase. That happens. On the return (remember Jet Blue had only one flight per day from JFK to TUS), our departure out of SYR was held up by ground conditions at JFK. To make a long story short, we arrived at JFK only to be informed we had missed our connection by a mere 20 minutes. This depite our pleas through Jet Blue's 800 number and the captain of our SYR-JFK flight to ask the flight to wait just a few minutes. This also despite the fact the westbound schedule had plenty of "fudge factor" time built into it, to the point that with even just a 20 minute delay, the flight would still have arrived TUS early. After sleeping in the dingy Jet Blue terminal at JFK, we took a morning flight to PHX, where we had to rent a car to get back to Tucson. (Typical of the NYC-type geographic ignorance, a Jet Blue agent offered to get us on a plane to a location near Tucson, such as Houston - LOL). All we got from Jet Blue for our inconvenience was a measly $50 voucher towards future travel and puzzlement that we were so dissatisfied with their sorry excuse for an airline. I contrast the above with the treatment our granddaughter received on a SW round trip this summer from BWI to PHX. I only wish you guys would serve SYR so that we can travel there reliably and economically, while receiving professional treatment, certainly much more professioanl than we were accorded by Jet Blue.
southwestfreak
Explorer A
thanks bill....i called a southwest customer service lady also and she said that most of the wanna get away fare were sold out instantly because that week is spring break for most. once again thanks Southwest Freak or Ryan
AZDave
Explorer C
I really like the way the schedule is amended to fit seasonal and day of the week fluctuations in travel demand. Two brief wonderings... ICT -- With DAL opened up to additional states and DEN burgeoning in service, I wonder if ICT is a candidate? A smaller market but higher priced than many, quick turnaround time, and short'sh hops to DAL, DEN and ORD. With business sluggish and leisure holding up fairly well, I wonder if WN has considered lower frequency service (even only 3-4X/week) between certain city pairs - even inlcluding new destinations? (I see a lot of this on European lower cost carriers). Great blog and I totally enjoy seeing the fine tunings with each new schedule extension.
Chris_in_Nashvi
Explorer C
Well based on what you said about how long you wait to let flights turn the corner and the fact that you did nothing to actually refute the fact that BNA was a declining market for David, that leaves me with visions of a newly renovated and re-deserted C Concourse which is depressing. Sure wish you hadn't led us on and let us get used to things if you weren't making money. There's got to be some demand or your most recent cuts to California and Seattle wouldn't have spurred Delta to add a fourth frequency to Memphis and re-instate Salt Lake City service earlier this year. I also don't believe AA would do LAX if that weren't the case and Ontario is LA. I also want to throw out there that I think it is kind of egoish to send the vibe that your doing us a favor and that we wouldn't be a good O&D market without you. In fact, speaking of O&D, when did connecting traffic become an acceptable demand driver for SW who has in the past only done flights based on whether the local market can actually support them? PHL has enough O&D to support more flights than DEN with no connections being a much larger city and even it with that it is a hub too you know. Also, if you are going to start making due with flights supported by connecting traffic then there is no reason that with Nashville you cannot at least add some service to make us more in line with our neighbors of similar size and geography in MEM & CLT who are also driven with connections to supplement their O&D and make routes profitable. And we certainly have an equivalent level of business travelers and HQ's to match their O&D with or without whatever you bring to the table. If you go and look through the Google news archives you'll see that of the three small hubs AA had it was the best and last to close being said to be off the closing list in 1993 by Travel Weekly who said, "Nashville, Tenn., earlier named as a candidate for closure, is now performing 'pretty well' and is no longer at much risk for shutdown, the American spokesman said." Had they not been so interested in Miami, they probably could have stuck it out in Nashville with the final schedule they ran here and made it work like Northwest did in Memphis. Not to mention we've grown quite a bit since then(ie. LP, Nissan North America, Oreck, Dell, etc. etc.). People think of us as the little backwoods city who is nothing but country music but that couldn't be farther from the truth. We also almost had the largest skyscraper outside of New York and Chicago built here before the recession that spawned this(http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-06-15-south-big-fish_x.htm) article which has to say something and are still in the works to build a convention center and get a medical trade center(http://nashville.bizjournals.com/nashville/stories/2009/08/24/story2.html) despite it. Anyway, there's definitely more potential here than you think(even if it is just 3 or 4 more cities) and this market could do a lot more if someone really sat down and worked with it. Especially if you got a regional partner like you would have with Lynx but I'm confident there are still a few more mainline markets. St. Louis certainly ought to be picked up. I'd be interested to see what your longer response would have been to David if you ever have a non-work time to lay it out there. Try not to bite my head off if you do that though. Enjoy your weekend.
annoyed_dulles_
Explorer C
I was wondering if there are any plans for dulles to den nonstops. i know that baltimore has nonstops, but driving in dc traffic is just not worth it. when you live in northern virginia, it is at least 1.5 hour drive to balitmore plus having the stress of traffic. i willingly pay more to fly on united out of dulles who has 8 nonstops a day. while having a direct is nice, i think southwest has a very much untapped market of nonstops to denver out of dulles. dc is very much different from the rest of the county in that people (northern virginians) will willingly pay more to fly out of dulles than have to deal with traffic all the way to balitmore. i would love denver and even boston on southwest. currently for boston i fly jetblue out of dulles.
We_only_fly_SW_
Explorer C
Please, please reconsider your schedule for AUS - PHL. As exclusive customers of SW, we don't like what we see with this new schedule!
Scott_D1
Explorer C
Bill, first of all, I love your blog!!! Now that I've buttered you up real good, (lol), I was hoping that Southwest isn't finished analyzing possible schedule additions at STL. I read what you said about DEN being a good airport for additional flights due to it's geographic location and the ability for connections. Well I know you are then aware that STL is even better for that than is DEN, as it's near the population center of the country as well as its geographic center. And of course STL is a larger metropolitan area than DEN. And also that STL will no longer have a hub airline to compete with, as opposed to TWO hubs at DEN with UA and Frontier. And of course STL has fewer weather interruptions than DEN. I'd love to see you add flights from STL to AUS, also STL>SAT, STL>IND, and STL>PDX, all of which were cut by AA. I believe that none of these cities will have nonstop service after AA finishes destroying it's STL hub in April. Other possibilities are STL>SFO (although I know UA just announced that new nonstop route) or STL>OAK. I think the O/D demand between these two large metropolitan areas can certainly justify more than one daily nonstop flight! I would also love to see you make the Nashville commenter happy by reconsidering STL>BNA! 🙂
Gregg
Explorer C
I'm sure Bill and the crew get tired of hearing this, but please come to Dayton, OH!