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 yr, 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 throughout the Thanksgiving vacation interval and is perhaps added to future schedules relying on how they carry out.
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Southwest will get pleasure from 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 will likely be operated seasonally all through the winter.
Southwest may even resume a slew of different routes that had been operated lately, equivalent to San Diego to Omaha, which final flew in Might 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 completely served by American Airways and United.
All of those routes will likely be lower in November. Southwest will make 13 different route cuts throughout 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 will likely 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 informed, these adjustments come as Southwest’s community planners have been going by way of 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’s also 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 instances and working schedules relying on the day of the week and the time of the month they’re flying.
Regardless of these adjustments, 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 little thing else concerning 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 may change vacationers’ flying patterns, however at the least Southwest is not absolutely upending its community.
Vacationers can now ebook Southwest flights by way of Jan. 5, 2026.
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