Southwest to End Paper Timetables

The Last Timetable issued by Southwest Airlines 6/28/09

Southwest announced the end of the paper timetable. The current timetable(pictured left), effective June 28th, the first one featuring LaGuardia, will be the airline’s last timetable.

Like many people, we have collected and hoarded timetables as a snapshot of the past. Airline after airline discontinued these documents, moving to online systems. The nice thing about the Southwest site is they offer not only the full timetable in PDF, but city timetables. There are some who advise you always have a timetable of alternate flights should things go wrong.

We will miss printed timetables as collector’s items. We suppose we will have to make do. We do wonder if there is a format that can be used to minimize the paper usage though, for those who opt to print their own, and increase options. We don’t know if there is an airline that offers dynamically generated PDF timetables, although it certainly would be a useful idea.

Until then, we will cherish all our old Southwest timetables, and all the ones we have of other carriers.

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