Southwest Airlines Community

For some time, I have been hoping Southwest would restore their BHM-MSY nonstops which were discontinued after Hurricane Katrina. I now have to drive when I make this trip, where in the past I would have flown on Southwest. I have posted a request elsewhere on this blog, and I wrote two letters to Southwest Customer Service. The response I got back from Customer Service, when I wrote, was that Southwest had not restored those nonstop flights because there was not enough demand locally in BHM, and BHM has very little connecting traffic. Note that both BNA and BWI (Southwest quasi-hubs) have had nonstops to MSY restored. Prior to Katrina, there were more MSY nonstops from BHM than from either BWI or BNA. Now there are none from BHM, but a couple from the quasi-hubs. Hmmmm . . . I wonder how Katrina caused BHM-MSY travel demand to fall so much more than BWI-MSY or BNA-MSY demand? Could there be some hub-like thinking in this officially non-hub airline? ... View more

I want to emphatically add my voice to those calling for a restoration of nonstop BHM-MSY service. Who is going to spend 5 or 6 hours flying when you can drive in the same amount of time? And that's actual flight time for some of the published schedules - it does not include check in and security, or getting to and from the airport. Southwest sometimes says that their competition is the automobile, not the other airlines. Well in the BHM-MSY travel market, the automobile is once again beating Southwest. Without nonstop service, it makes no sense to fly. Please, bring back the nonstops. ... View more