Southwest Airlines is preparing to launch a travel option that is common in the airline industry but doesn’t yet exist at the Dallas-based carrier.
Southwest says it will begin offering red-eye flights from some of its most popular cities in the coming years.
It will be the first time the airline has offered overnight routes, where passengers depart overnight in one time zone and wake up the next morning in a different time zone (assuming they slept at all).
The aptly named routes are common across the industry. In the US, dozens of flights depart from the West Coast every night en route to the East Coast. The same applies to flights to Europe.
But Southwest doesn’t currently offer red-eyes β and historically hasn’t flown them regularly.
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In the past, technological limitations in the airline’s booking channels prevented the airline from offering red-eye bookings. After the airline migrated to a new system several years ago, that technological barrier was no longer an obstacle.
From that point on, it was seemingly only a matter of time before the airline would take action to offer red-eye, as CEO Bob Jordan hinted at an aviation conference last fall.
“At some point, Southwest Airlines is going to have a red-eye. Absolutely,” Jordan confirmed during remarks at the Skift Aviation Conference in November.
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When do Southwest red-eye flights start?
It’s still not entirely clear when Southwest’s first red-eye flights could start. The airline still needs to complete “a wide range of work,” a company spokesperson told TPG on Monday, noting the process could take “a few years.”
Future red-eye routes would likely depart from key leisure markets “where they would make sense for our customers, and in places where Southwest has a large presence,” the spokesperson said, specifically pointing to Hawaii and Harry Reid International Airport (LAS) in Las Vegas. Vegas.
A quick look at the South West road map shows the obvious opportunities. For example, it flies from Honolulu’s Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL) alone to more than a half-dozen continental U.S. airports.
The airport’s online departures board for Monday shows a wide range of late-night departures to the US mainland for American Airlines.
It’s a similar story for United Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Hawaiian Airlines.
But you can see that Southwest’s departure from Hawaii to the US mainland ends at 3:15 PM on this day.
The airline envisions up to 50 overnight red-eye flights in the future, TPG’s Edward Russell first reported in The Washington Post last week, citing comments from a Southwest executive at the 2024 Routes Americas conference in Colombia.
Why is Southwest adding red-eye flights?
As regards Why Southwest is interested in adding red-eye flights to its daily schedule, with economics a big factor.
Red-eye flights help airlines keep their jets in service even during nighttime hours. After all, planes don’t make money if they sit still.
βOne way to continue to develop your revenue production is to fly our airplanes and use them more,β Jordan said at the November conference. ‘You’re actually producing [capacity] without spending more capital.β
And the need for Southwest to maximize its existing fleet is critical amid Boeing’s 737 MAX delivery delays, which have led the airline to lower its 2024 delivery forecast in recent weeks.
In short
Your next trip with Southwest probably won’t include a red-eye flight, with overnight routes likely still at least a few years away. But the airline has made it clear that it will add these sleep-depriving flights to its future plans, offering a travel option that has been used by its competitors for decades.
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