Southwest Launches in Boston

Southwest Airlines launched yesterday its service to and from Boston’s Logan Airport. The service will offer five daily nonstops to Baltimore-Washington International Airport and five to Chicago-Midway. Connections will be available to forty-eight other destinations. Southwest will be operating from gates E1A and E1B in Terminal E, alongside the international service.

Southwest Gates at Logan Airport, courtesy Dan Webb

For the first time, starting next month, Southwest will go head to head with JetBlue Airways, when the latter begins Boston to Baltimore route as well. The two airlines have overlapped before. Both, for example, offer service from the Bay Area to the Los Angeles area. But this is the first sign of serious competition between them.

We weren’t at the Logan launch. Our roving correspondent assigned to the Boston area was unavailable to head over. So, in lieu of that, we offer coverage from Dan Webb, at Things in the Sky. You can find his coverage and photographs here.

Southwest is on Day 2 of its Boston festivities, serving chowder to passengers today. Southwest is clearly loving Boston, and Boston will clearly, if it doesn’t already, come to love having Southwest.

As much as we hate to admit it, as we need them down here in New York, their Logan service is free to expand without the slot limitations that LaGuardia has. They have more flights out of Logan to start and can offer even more with the twice as many gates they acquired there.

Either way…Pack Your Bags…It’s On.