Southwest to Begin Boston Service

Southwest, only a few days after announcing its schedule for new New York-Laguardia service, has announced a schedule for service to Boston’s Logan Airport. This continues a recent trend for the airline…opening up shop in larger markets.

Southwest’s bread and butter for several years has been medium and underserved markets, opening up frequency and capacity that no other airline could make work. Now, after sending the citizens of Bostons running to Providence and Manchester, and the citizens of New York out to Long Island, in addition to the people who previously went in the other direction to fly, they are coming into these airports…but only with hub service.

We originally predicted Southwest would land in these markets with a few flights to BWI or Chicago-Midway, and one Floridean destination as a kickoff to a fight. But, we’re guessing that the cautious approach Southwest has for this new type of market is to establish a presence to their major hubs first. They don’t want to take on JetBlue and Delta on the leisure-filled Florida markets when they have been focusing on attracting business customers. That said, there are also enough airlines running service to Chicago and the Washington metro area out of Boston and New York for some serious competition, although Southwest will distinguish itself as it usually does.

The Southwest effect is not what it once was, but there is still an effect. It has merely changed with the times. They will begin five flights daily to both Midway and BWI on August 16, with fares to BWI starting at $49, and $89 to Chicago.