Yesterday, Southwest opened our flight schedule from May 9, 2009, through June 26, 2009. In a continuing effort to optimize our flight schedule, we have eliminated 32 existing roundtrip flights from our current schedule and added 19 roundtrip flights for a net reduction of 13 roundtrip flights systemwide. We will initiate new nonstop service between DEN and TUS with one daily nonstop flight when the new schedule opens in May. Cities like BNA, OAK, and SEA are seeing previously cut flights return to their schedule as demand picks up for summer travel.
“In today’s environment, it is more important than ever to maximize our productivity with our aircraft,” said Gary. ”Our optimization exercise is a case of eliminating unproductive flights and reallocating our aircraft to match supply with demand, all the while focusing on key cities such as Denver.”
The majority of the flight reductions are changes to frequencies—not eliminations. The city pairs that will be eliminated are: AUS to MAF, DTW to MCO, FLL to MHT, and ISP to RSW.
Please check out our latest blog post (titled "Deck the halls with schedules") from Schedule Development Lead Planner Bill Owen explaining our optimization efforts!
