If there was an interstate highway called, “Change and Growth,” we could all agree that Southwest has been in the fast lane for quite some time. However, if you spend your whole life on the freeway, you never have the chance to take that side trip to see the 4th largest statue in the Continental U.S. (hint: it’s in a Southwest city)*.
You might be asking, “What could a tall statue have to do with the August Base Schedule?” Well, 2017 is already shaping up to be a whirlwind of a year with lots of BIG changes--new cities, new markets, new reservation system, to name a few. But following a busy July will be an August of comparatively lighter schedule changes. There will be no new markets and all exits will be seasonal, save one (CUN-MKE).
Because summer is over, and kids are back to school, fewer people are traveling for leisure. This focuses seasonal reductions to our leisure destinations--particularly Florida and international – and the mega-stations that funnel that traffic to-and-from those regions. Some of the top stations you will see seasonal reductions in are MCO, FLL, TPA, DEN, BWI, and MDW. How drastically the demand for each station changes has the greatest impact on how much the schedule changes. SJU, for example sees above average seasonal shifts, which resulted in a decrease of nine total trips for August. If we didn’t account for these swings in travel throughout the year, we’d have a lot of empty seats in the seasonal lows, and not enough seats in the seasonal highs. It’s one of the many pieces to the puzzle of knowing where our Customers want to go when they “Wanna get away?”
See below for summary of changes and you can find all the details in the attached PDF.
*If you didn’t immediately open a new tab to search out the answer, the 4th largest statue in the Continental U.S. is Tulsa’s own Golden Driller, standing 75 feet tall.