Southwest Airlines today announced its intention to serve Milwaukee later this year. There are not specific details as of yet, but it plans to offer multiple destinations and will commence sometime after its Boston and New York launches. Southwest has not actually grown this year, but has added flights to these new cities by trimming or adjusting service in other cities to free up the planes.
The four cities this year…Minneapolis/St. Paul, Boston, New York-LaGuardia, and Milwaukee, are the most cities Southwest has added in a single year since 1996, when they added Tampa Bay, Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, and Providence.
The cities in question set Southwest up for confrontations with several other airlines. Despite a 0% growth, and new schedule optimization software, Southwest is taking on notoriously defensive Northwest(now Delta) in Minneapolis, AirTran on the Boston and Milwaukee routes, and the JetBlue service they did not necessarily anticipate on the Baltimore-Boston route. There are some regional services on these routes, but Delta has already given up on the Baltimore route, and may elsewhere, as US Airways might on LaGuardia to Baltimore. Midwest Airlines, despite its Milwaukee hub, has contracted so much in the last year, they are not a significant contender.
It indicates an interesting aggression for Southwest over the past few years. It took on US Airways in Philadelphia, United in Denver, and several more. It has proven it is willing to play hard ball and bring its effect to the larger markets, as opposed to its earlier habit of avoiding them. Not only will it be competing with them, we predict it is likely to succeed, perhaps even triumph in the long run.
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