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What happened to the PDX-BWI flight?

terry5929
Explorer C

Last year this flight operated on a daily basis during the summer, but this summer it is apparently only scheduled on weekends now. Why did this flight get such a downgrade? I took this flight quite a few times last summer, and they were always completly full. I have family in the Baltimore area and I travel there a lot. I don't want to have to use Alaska's PDX to BWI flight, as Southwest is so much better, but it's a bummer to see this route being offered so infrequently this year... Smiley Sad

 

Also, I'm pretty sure this route got downgraded before the 737 MAX grounding, so I don't think that's the reason for this.

2 REPLIES 2

Re: What happened to the PDX-BWI flight?

DancingDavidE
Aviator A
Solution

@terry5929 wrote:

Last year this flight operated on a daily basis during the summer, but this summer it is apparently only scheduled on weekends now. Why did this flight get such a downgrade? I took this flight quite a few times last summer, and they were always completly full. I have family in the Baltimore area and I travel there a lot. I don't want to have to use Alaska's PDX to BWI flight, as Southwest is so much better, but it's a bummer to see this route being offered so infrequently this year... Smiley Sad

 

Also, I'm pretty sure this route got downgraded before the 737 MAX grounding, so I don't think that's the reason for this.


I've never seen anyone from Southwest come on here to explain route changes, but didn't want your question to sit here with no response either - as a customer-to-customer forum the only facts we know are that if you want to reach Southwest directly, use the contact us link on the website and send them your interest in having that route restored. 

 

Southwest may collect info from this community from time to time, but the canned response is that routes are adjusted due to changing needs, etc.

 

The network is always shifting and with a fixed number of planes available they must have found some better use of equipment and people - either a shorter route from PDX that makes more money, or competition has changed the landscape on that particular route, or it wasn't full on the other days you didn't fly - it is hard to say for sure. 

 

With BWi being one of Southwest's major airports the constraint (whatever it may be) was probably on the PDX end.

 

 

 

Home airport MDW, frequent visitor to MCO to see the mouse.

Re: What happened to the PDX-BWI flight?

SWDigits
Aviator A

If you're curious to see some of the historical posts from Bill, a retired member of the Southwest Network Planning Team, click over to his profile and the discussions he participated in, here (51,155 Loves Received!)  If you have some time, click through his posts, they are fascinating to read if you're in to this kind of stuff.

 

He regularly provided insight to schedule changes, see this 2018 link here as an example, it includes this quote, "And to accommodate March’s Spring Break traffic surge, we’re continuing to seasonally tweak markets and frequencies, adding a few new ones, bringing many back, and ending a few."

 

Another post, here, from 2016 includes a short side note about ending nonstop service between Atlanta and Okalhoma City.  Note that the post (and other posts) also includes a link to a .pdf view of the spreadsheet summarizing changes.

 

I think Bill's posts are more than any other airline, maybe even Southwest now, will publicly provide about thy why and how of their schedule changes.


Customer | Home airport DCA