Southwest Expanding Outside the Comfort Zone

Image by Eric E Johnson via Flickr

For years, Southwest Airlines has been known for going outside the box. They flew to secondary airports, provided service where other carriers could not sustain a turboprop with sheer volume, and did not work with other carriers.

Southwest has made moves away from that over the last few years. They moved into places like Philadelpha, Pittsburgh, Denver, and most recently, Minneapolis-St. Paul. Now, they are trying to buy slots from bankrupt carrier ATA to service New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

It also is going to start a codeshare partnership with Mexican Airline Volaris, and a similar partnership with Canadian discounter Westjet. Volaris, which was founded in 2006, flies Airbus aircraft between 23 cities in Mexico. Both of these, although we are not as familar with Volaris as we are with Westjet, seem like good moves. Linking with carriers north and south of the border allow for useful combinations. Certainly its arrangement with ATA proved it can execute a successful codeshare, although ATA never really worked out for them, as the quality levels were somewhat different.

Volaris will be operating all transborder flights in this plan, and they do not yet serve the United States, so an arrangement with them will likely not come into effect till 2010, but the Westjet deal, it is said, could be in effect sometime next year.

As for the other big news, service to LaGuardia Airport, we had a look at what Bill Owen of their Planning Department had to say on Southwest’s Blog. LaGuardia is a far cry from its only service into the New York area, Islip airport, where they have a substantial presence. LaGuardia actually is in New York City, not over an hour away.

We are native New Yorkers, and despite its habit of delay, LaGuardia is our preferred airport due to its proximity. With seven roundtrip daily flights that they are bidding on, Southwest could operate several flights to Chicago Midway, and hopefully one or two to Baltimore-Washington International Airport, allowing a dual hub option with some redundacy. We hope they do not deploy all the capacity to Midway as they did in the case of Minnapolis-St. Paul.

As for Long Island’s Macarthur Airport(Islip), we hope that Southwest maintains its commitment there and considers adding additional capacity, and working to make intermodal transportation more efficient. Currently, a private shuttle service is offered for $5 each way, as well as LI Bus service between the airport and the Long Island Rail Road’s Ronkokoma station, where connections to other parts of Long Island and New York City are available. A ride in Manhattan takes about an hour and a half. We’d love to see Southwest partner with the LIRR and the shuttle, perhaps offering a discount on ground transportation with presentation of a Southwest ticket.

These types of arrangements are lacking at many airports. Southwest, as a champion of such service, should negotiate with ground transportation and local community bus service to make itself even more competitive and to maintain its status as champion of the secondary and regional airport.

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