@chinchunchen wrote:
This is frustrated that I have paid attention to the airport (SNA), Santa Ana or Orange County of California, has been always on excluded on promotion for more than 6 months. I have no idea why SNA is discriminated and not ever in the promotion list. SNA is a popular destination for Disneyland and else and it is not like isolated place. I am a 1.5M miles Rapid Reward flyer and I fly at least every other week. If SNA is always excluded from flight promotion, SWA will be losing customers like business travelers, family in vacation and SWA customer.
Hola! I understand the frustration but this appears to be beyond SW's control; thus I have never been able to utilize SNA being a frequent flyer out of SoCal. The pic above is from one of my short-haul flights from Northern Cal passing by SNA making its initial descent into SAN.
The strange fact is this: I would consider SNA as a potential 'convenience' airport if I didn't want to head to SAN but like you, I've never been able to get deals or good pricing at SNA. My reason for all this is kind of speculative but my opinion is based on this key fact:
SNA has operated since 1985 under a legal settlement with OC, Newport Beach and a few organizations:
https://www.ocair.com/about/administration/settlement-agreement/
Long story short, this legal settlement includes an annual passenger cap which unfortunately creates a situation where airlines cannot expand supply or add flights to meet growing demand which leads to higher prices. If SW were to include SNA in a sale, my prediction is that would result in my opinion a surge in demand growth that would create a situation where far too many passengers would be fed into SNA which would violate the cap restrictions on the settlement, thus a huge no-no.
Given that OC is a high-demand market thanks to Disney and other major destinations, I believe Southwest is in a position where it cannot run promos that would bring additional passenger traffic through SNA.
Hope this info helps and I do agree and hope something gets done to resolve all these legal hurdles so the market economy can be free to efficiently drive the airport operations and SNA can better compete and grow. Thankfully, there are competing alternative convenience airports not too far away including LGB and ONT which kind of helps keep prices somewhat in check for SNA but the passenger cap I believe is the key driver of why SNA gets excluded from SW sales.