Southwest Airways is making much more tweaks to its community because it extends its schedule into 2026.
The Dallas-based airline will add three routes later this 12 months, together with two from one of many airline’s fastest-growing airports. This consists of never-before-operated service from Nashville Worldwide Airport (BNA) to Dulles Worldwide Airport (IAD) close to Washington, D.C., and to El Paso Worldwide Airport (ELP) in Texas.
Each of those routes will function in the course of the Thanksgiving vacation interval and may be added to future schedules relying on how they carry out.
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Southwest will take pleasure in a monopoly on the brand new El Paso connection, however United Airways already operates a number of day by day flights between BNA and IAD.
In the meantime, Southwest will as soon as once more add service between Los Angeles and Oklahoma Metropolis, a route that hasn’t been operated since January 2018, Cirium schedules present. This route shall be operated seasonally all through the winter.
Southwest may even resume a slew of different routes that had been operated in recent times, reminiscent of San Diego to Omaha, which final flew in Could 2020, and Chicago to Tampa, which final flew in June 2024.
However whereas the airline is actually including some noteworthy new flights, maybe the larger information is the 5 markets that Southwest is completely exiting. You may discover the total record beneath, however highlights embrace a noteworthy pullback in two California cities, Burbank and Lengthy Seaside.
- Baltimore-Chicago’s O’Hare Worldwide Airport (ORD)
- Burbank-New Orleans
- Burbank-San Antonio
- Lengthy Seaside-El Paso
- Lengthy Seaside-St. Louis
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Moreover, the suspension of service between Baltimore and Chicago will depart the route solely served by American Airways and United.
All of those routes shall be lower in November. Southwest will make 13 different route cuts in the course of the winter (seen within the map beneath), however these are marked as seasonal and are slated to return quickly.
Apparently, Southwest may even shuffle its nascent red-eye schedule for the winter season. The airline will go from 27 to 23 day by day red-eye flights from October to November. San Jose, California, to Baltimore would be the solely market to (seasonally) lose service with the red-eye adjustment, whereas three different markets shall be retimed to sunlight flying with the identical frequencies as initially scheduled.
The affected red-eyes embrace Sacramento to Baltimore, Los Angeles to Houston and Phoenix to Atlanta.
All instructed, these modifications come as Southwest’s community planners have been going via the airline’s route map with a fine-tooth comb, trimming service that may not be instantly worthwhile and shifting to higher-priority markets like Nashville, San Diego and Sacramento.
Southwest is not simply being particularly prudent about the place it flies; it is usually being very intentional about which days it operates every flight. In November, the airline will function a whopping seven rotating schedules to higher match capability with demand. As such, vacationers can count on to see completely different flight occasions and working schedules relying on the day of the week and the time of the month they’re flying.
Regardless of these modifications, Southwest’s route map will nonetheless largely seem like it did earlier than Elliott Funding Administration, the activist investor group, began placing immense strain on Southwest to spice up profitability.
Practically every thing else in regards to the airline — together with the two-bags-fly-free promise, open boarding, lack of extra-legroom seats and refusal so as to add fundamental economic system — is altering. The jury continues to be out on whether or not this can change vacationers’ flying patterns, however not less than Southwest is not totally upending its community.
Vacationers can now e-book Southwest flights via Jan. 5, 2026.
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