"Philadelphia is carrying some of the freight that Baltimore used to carry," Devereaux said. "Volumes last year out of BWI increased 3 percent but have been flat for the first couple months this year because of the economic slowdown."
Southwest Airlines is looking to expand its freight operations, Devereaux said. The company's overall cargo revenues decreased by $4 million, or 3 percent, in 2007 vs. 2006. Though Southwest raised its shipping rates, it couldn't offset a $14 million decline in mail revenue resulting from the airline's decision to stop carrying U.S. mail.
To expand, Southwest wants to tap into the New York City area's market, by potentially shuttling freight by land to one of its East Coast airports, Devereaux said.
"We would want to have a drop-off point maybe in Newark and LaGuardia, and then you could truck it to Baltimore or Philadelphia," Devereaux said. "It would allow us to, in essence, serve a market that we really don't serve."
Though BWI is Southwest's fourth-largest passenger airport, it was the airline's ninth-biggest cargo market in 2007, he said.
Southwest's goal to enter a code-sharing partnership to start offering international service through an affiliated carrier by early 2009 could benefit the airline's cargo business as well as its passengers. Any international airline with a large import or export cargo business could be an attractive partner for Southwest, Devereaux said.
"We could take that international freight and put it into our network, feeding their system or vice versa," he said. "We need to make sure we take full advantage of all the available capacity that we have in our system."
laura.mccandlish@baltsun.com
