Southwest Airlines is scheduled to announce plans Tuesday to offer nonstop service from Baltimore to Boston, adding a second major market to its portfolio in little more than a week as it works to build business despite the downturn in travel amid the recession.
Beginning Aug. 16, Southwest will schedule 10 flights daily to Boston's Logan International Airport, including five each from BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport and from Chicago. Last week, the air carrier began booking flights to New York's LaGuardia Airport from Baltimore and Chicago. Southwest is the largest carrier at BWI.
The moves come after Southwest announced cutbacks in some routes as the airline industry suffers from a pullback in consumer and business spending on travel. Adding big markets such as Boston, New York and Minneapolis-St. Paul expands customer choices and provides prospects for new business. But the new cities are a departure from the trademark Southwest model that focused on airports that aren't as busy and are less likely to interfere with the carrier's on-time record.
Bob Jordan, Southwest's executive vice president of strategy and planning, says the carrier's original model has evolved during the past 20 years and the idea that the airline only flies to smaller airports is "a bit of a misconception."
"We're in bigger airports - Los Angeles, Oakland, Phoenix. ... We don't avoid larger airports," said Jordan, who pointed out that recent reductions in capacity have allowed the airline to replace flights that were losing money with those that have more profit potential.
"We're flying between 90 [million] to 100 million customers each year," he said. "And we have a built-in group of people who want to go to places like New York. They want to go to Boston. ... If you're not there, they can't fly you. So we need to be there."
Southwest serves smaller markets to the north and south of Boston with several daily flights to Manchester, N.H., and Providence, R.I. The airline said those flights will continue. In addition, customers flying those two New England routes will be offered the same fare price as the Boston service, which starts at $49 each way with a 14-day advance purchase.
The move is not a surprise: Southwest executives expressed interest this year in launching service at Logan to expand their business travel profile.
But analysts also see Southwest as simply following the money in an effort to shore up revenue in a challenging economy.
