Suffice to say that it’s not business as usual at the major US airlines lately when it comes to network planning. Back in October, Southwest Airlines announced its two latest (surprising) destinations, and today we’ve learned more about what routes we should expect out of these airports.
Continue reading: Southwest Launching Flights To IAH & ORD (Routes Revealed)
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
The last paragraph notes that Southwest uses a hub and spoke system. Traditionally, Southwest did NOT use a hub and spoke system. In recent years, it has somewhat of a hub and spoke system in some airports, like Midway, but not strict banks of flights as Northwest did in Memphis and Delta in SLC.
With more and more traffic, it makes sense to service more than one airport in one metropolitan area. FLL is more convenient to some, MIA more convenient to others.
Southwest used to brag that it never leaves airports. SFO was abandoned but they came back as is IAH. One of the few airports it left was Beaumont, TX, EWR and the closed airports of Denver Stapleton and Austin Mueller.
I consider Midway slightly less safe due to the short runways. That and LGA and DCA.
Damn, Southwest has no chill this year lol. All they need is to enter DFW and JFK to completely their footprint in major markets.
Much like their Miami plans, I also think most of their routes out of O'Hare and IAH will be to their hubs/focus cities, and/or any lucrative seasonal/year-round leisure routes that locals would like.
IAH is not quite as obvious to me, but opening ORD is a no brainer. Ohare is so much better located to the bulk of the wealthier suburbs west and northwest of the city. They will most certainly access new customers with this move.
Convenience is definitely a factor here, and the two Chicago airports serve two different groups to a certain extent. A large number of people in suburbs north of Chicago wouldn't be willing to fly out of Midway (located Southwest of the city) because it is quite far, and ORD (located northwest of Chicago) is much more convenient. Midway also serves people who live in Northwest Indiana, for whom ORD is far. The Chicago metro area is pretty expansive.
This is actually a pretty huge deal for Houston. Hobby is not in the greatest of neighborhoods. This will open up a ton of the Houston market for Southwest. There is a very large population in the West, Northwest, North, and Northeast sides of Houston that fly only out of IAH because of how far Hobby is from them. Being a former resident of Illinois I think this will be pretty huge for them at ORD as well. Midway is like Hobby and not I’m the greatest neighborhood. A lot of people don’t use Midway because if it’s location alone. I think these moves by Southwest will greatly expand their customer base and be home run moves for them.
@Doug this in my opinion is a no brained in Houston as well. There’s a lot of people here that won’t fly Southwest because they don’t want to fly in and out of Hobby for various reasons. Will make it so much more convenient for people on the north side of Houston.
As other's have said, ORD is the primary airport for the northern suburbs of Chicago. I don't know anyone that lives outside the city to the north that would consider Southwest because of the distance. If I had to guess, in current times given the wealth in those suburbs they represent a lucrative leisure market while we wait for business travel to pick back up.
So in normal times, Southwest is capturing a decent leisure demand from folks in the city, and are competitive for their fair share of business travel downtown as a slightly more convenient location vs. ORD which is terrible to get to in traffic. However, in a year when business travel evaporates, you have Southwest competing for leisure traffic from downtown and losing some to UA/AA, but also losing out on the entire suburban leisure market which may be larger right now.
but why did southwest leave Newark??? There is plenty of demand at Newark which Jetblue is gladly taking over
Just curious, why is driving 20 minutes farther to Fort Lauderdale a big deal? Traffic?
Sharon - they left EWR because they couldn't make money there. They opted to focus on LGA.
@Juan
WN cannot fly to DFW under a legal agreement they have until 2025. We might see them fly a few routes once the agreement lapses but I doubt they will grow it past what they have at DAL unless DFW dramatically increases their Terminal space.
“ Southwest Airlines largely uses a hub-and-spoke system”
Whaaaa? LOL, no. They don’t. They have airports where they have larger market share that act as pseudo-hubs, but it’s not unusual for them to do flights that literally go SEA-LAS-PHX-SLC (all as one flight number and through flight, you don’t even leave the plane if you’re on a later stop) or SAT-DAL-FLL-BWI. Of all the airlines they are the least likely to run flights AAA-BBB-AAA, with AAA as the hub. They don’t run banked operations the way other airlines do either.
Another Houstonian here. I live on the far north side of Houston (the Woodlands) so getting to Hobby is ~1 hr each way, and that’s not counting traffic. I love SW and would fly them a ton more if the airport were more convenient, so this is huge for me (depending on what flights actually go out of IAH).
I live on the northside of Chicago (in fact, we are right under the arrival path along Lake Shore Drive). While I am a city resident, getting to ORD is so much easier for me. A cab ride out to the Blue Line stop at Montrose and I can be at ORD in under 30-35 minutes. Getting to MDW requires me to get into the Loop and and taking the Orange line - a process that can take me upwards of 50-60 minutes - even if everything is timed well. With COVID cutting down on traffic, I could probably get to ORD via the Kennedy in 30 minutes and just skip taking the CTA. This "might" influence me to consider WN - but as an AA EXP, it would have to be significant to make me jump.
Yes, Hobby is simply not a realistic option for Houston residents living in the northern suburbs. You would face a ridiculous drive through downtown in Houston traffic. Easily over an hour. My parents live in The Woodlands and would love to be able to fly Southwest, but cannot. Hobby is also a really crappy, small airport, comparatively, and is in a bad part of town. This changes everything.
MDW is the more convenient airport to downtown Chicago and the south/southwest suburbs. ORD is more convenient to the N/NW sides of the city, north/northwest/west suburbs. Lastly, ORD has far more potential frequent fliers within this catchment basin than MDW has.
Go anywhere north/northwest of ORD and MDW becomes a VERY unattractive alternative because of the horrid traffic issues on the Stevenson Expy (I-55). Because of the alignment of Chicago expressways, MDW ends up being a lot tougher to get to from the north than you'd think - and the traffic can be very unpredictable. I once missed a flight for which I'd left home 2 1/2 hours before flight time. The trip was usually 45 minutes (less traffic), but I hit an early (6 am) wreck and each minute of delay cost me three more minutes due to extra congestion.
I love WN, but rarely fly them anymore because I've since moved even farther north and it's not worth that hell of a drive. I'd imagine a similar situation in the Houston area, btw. WN is missing out of a lot of potential customers by not serving significant parts of these large metros. I hope this works out!
ORD is much more convenient than MDW for those of us in Wisconsin (MKE doenst have nearly as many SouthWest flights as MDW). Getting to MDW from Wisconsin is a nightmare.
@John, with respect to Hobby and The Woodlands, truly you can't get there from here without passing by IAH 🙂
I'm not a HOU apologist but Hobby has, in the last couple of years, undergone considerable renovations and is a much improved experience for those who are convenient to it. This includes a new gate area for Southwest as well as international destinations. You can park in a secure surface lot and walk to check-in in ten minutes.
It is not Changi, but what is in the U.S.?
Not sure about others, but we live in the Western suburbs of Chicago and are almost equally distant from both airports, a little over 20 miles. So for us, it's a perfect world with two major airports so close by.
I'm a transportation researcher, and this move is a no brainer. There is no reason for an airline as successful and leisure-focused as WN not to offer service at primary hubs. This is the same model that other airlines have been using successfully since deregulation. It is wise for an airline to have a presence at each of a city's major hubs in order to optimize their market penetration.
In Chicago, due to histotic development factors the areas to the North and West of the city stretch further and are more developed than areas South of the city. With that being said, it would be a crying shame if Southwest pulled out of MDW or reduced service there. MDW is essential for people living in the South Suburbs and NW Indiana, which probably account for 3-4 million people. Just as residents living in the NW suburbs complain about the long drive to MDW, it is equally long for people in the South Suburbs to get to ORD. Chicago is too large of a city not to have more than one airport. If anything it could use a 3rd airport.
Whenever there is a choice like with DAL or DFW, HOU or IAH or MDW or ORD I would usually go with the Southwest airport as they usually have their stuff a lot better together than other airports. DAL and DFW in particular are a world of difference, from parking, getting through security and from there to the gate.
Seems like this should add many positioning options for international flights out of Chicago and Houston that we didn’t have before.
SWA is the largest domestic carrier in the United States. SWA simply is adapting quickly to the business environment. "Just plane smart."
MDW is in such a sketchy neighborhood too, not many reliable 3p parking options nor cheap hotels for park n flies. So yes, coming from Wisconsin I would fly out of ORD 10/10 times before MDW
I live 10min from ORD and am thrilled! Not likely to fly SWA as I have Platinum status with AA but am hopeful SWA/Spirit will help drive down AA prices for leisure destinations such as Vegas and Florida
Living in Southeast Houston (near NASA), HOU was always the best. I hated driving all the way to IAH, so I can imagine the people up north feel the same way about driving to HOU. I agree that Hobby is a much nicer airport now. I just wish that someone would bring back the feeder service like used to be at Elington so I wouldn't have to drive to IAH when I need to international!
Lots of folks live on the north side of Houston, but IAH is far away from the city itself compared to HOU. It's the difference between Narita and Haneda. With the opening of routes to IAH, ORD, and MIA, I wonder if SW is positioning themselves for a code sharing agreement with an international airline post-Covid.
A lot of northernern houstonites commenting here. As a southie (Clear Lake), I'll say that going to IAH is an absolute slog if there is any traffic at all, and even if there isnt. And their usually iss traffic, since you need to go all the way into the city, and then all the way out - its always rush our in one direction. If you need someone from home to come pick you up, that's easily 2 hours out of their day.
The other terrible thing about IAH is that that's where UA is, with their ridiculously high prices for direct flights from Houston to anywhere. Even as a Houstonian, I cannot fathom giving them loyalty, given the driving times and the high prices. Instead, I'm an exec plat on AA. I make the quick drive to Hobby, connect in Dallas, and I'm on my way, usually at a muchhh lower price than what UA is asking for me to drive to their remote, rural airport.
And also, not sure what Hobby's neighbhorhood has to do with anything. In the zillion times I've driven there, I'd never felt uncomfortable or at risk, no matter the hour.
Hooray !
Finally ORD availability, after early SWA positive MDW experiences. Due to Corporate demands, had to utilize AA ORD connections. As a current AA MM, I look forward to re establishing my
SWA relationship @ ORD.
@Charlie @JL100 I used to live in Brickell and could get up to FLL in 30 min max and this was before coronavirus. Yes, the drivers on I-95 are some of the worst I have ever seen but you learn how to drive defensively and go around the people driving 45mph in the left lane or the people who somehow brake and merge onto the expressway simultaneously lol.
When I first moved down here I found it so funny how people think Miami and Fort Lauderdale are so far away from each other. They act like you need to make it a weekend trip. I guess I have a different perspective because I grew up in Metro Detroit where there is no public transport and it is totally normal to drive 45-50 minutes to go shopping, grab dinner/drinks, go hang out at a friend's house, etc.
@GRUSA, from your response I'm guessing you would consider DCA, IAD, and BWI to be close to one another? How about LGA, JFK, and EWR?
By the way, I never leave my car at airports anymore, so the distance from home to the airport has to be measured in cab fares as well as minutes. I'm guessing that the cab fare from Coral Gables to FLL is significant.
Well, here is my two cents. I am glad they will fly out of ORD. We use SW for a lot of positioning flights to Europe.
Second thought - wish they would finally partner with a carrier that flies to Europe.
Maybe it's just me but I loved Hobby airport. So much more relaxing than IAH. And our home was in north Houston.
WN is largely a hub & spoke airline ??
I'm sitting here wondering what airport is their primarly hub 😉
I've always considered them a "criss-cross" (the country) airline. That, combined with high frequency in many of their markets means they offer connection opportunities all over the country.
A few years back, Mom & I were flying ABQ-TPA (nonstop) during Christmas.
About boarding time, they announced a 1 hour delay. The SEA-ABQ flight was running late and had about 40 connections to our flight, so we were holding for them.
On approach to TPA, it was announced that the FLL (which was where plane this plane continued), RDU and JAX flights would be held for connections from our flight.
Walking by the TPA-RDU gate, they announced about 3 flights out of RDU that were going to be held.
I never considered ABQ, TPA or RDU to be WN focus cites, much less a hub. Yet they had enough criss-crossing connections, that "hub like" decisions needed to be made to protect as connections as possible.
More and more companies have moved to the northern suburbs in Houston, so the market is huge. And I have personally chosen other airlines, especially for short duration trips, since I live 20 minutes north of IAH vs an hour north of HOU. Willing to pay a premium to fly from IAH if I get home quicker!
Both my wife and I are from the NW side of the Chicago metro area where our families still are. I personally would avoid ORD and prefer to fly into the smaller and easier to use MDW which I do once a year or so to visit. Lines are shorter, rental car facility is convenient. I avoid the Stevenson and Kennedy (highways) especially during commute hours and take north-south surface roads like Cicero and Harlem from MDW. They are quicker most of the time or at least the traffic is moving and less frustrating than the highways.
Hobby and Midway are getting saturated pre-COVID, so smart strategy to serve customers in 2 cities with passionate customers. Go SWA!!!
As someone who travels a lot on Southwest and travels through Houston as well, I am perplexed by Southwest's move. Southwest traditionally has had a hold over Hobby while United has a hold over IAH. Spirit has started to compete with United at IAH to provide a low-cost fare but it would be interesting to see what Southwest brings and where it flies. As one of the comments above said, it is somewhat of a distance between the two airports and if you add traffic time - it can take up to 2 hours to get from one airport to the other. So this would rule out transfer of passengers - unless they run a bus like they do from Gatwick to Heathrow in London. - so then they would be relying on point-to-point business or to-from Houston for these flights?
WN has traditionally stayed away from airports with high air traffic volumes and systemic long ATC delays. I’m wondering if the air traffic is so greatly reduced - there are no lengthy delays out of these airports currently(?) - that they have chosen this moment in time to finally approach these locations?
As others have said, it's not so much that ORD/IAH are more convenient to a specifically lucrative market (although arguably ORD is a lot more convenient to the wealthy North Side suburbs than MDW and HOU is in a worse area than IAH) it's more that they are just huge metro areas where one airport can be far less convenient than the other depending where you are. ORD/IAH are on the north sides of their cities and MDW/HOU are on the south sides. In Houston particularly, if you live on one side of the city and want to get to the other, you essentially have to go through or take a long route around downtown to do so. Essentially for both cities, unless you live downtown (which most people don't), one airport is going significantly more convenient than the other.
Terminal 5 at ORD, interesting. I did not realize that Frontier also flies out of the (former?) International terminal (since 2018), though I guess that makes sense given they are shuffling gates there. If you fly WN from ORD, you can have Priority Pass lounge access.
WN's new routes from MIA were largely to cities where there were not major competitive responses but that is absolutely not the case with their ORD routes.
However, WN is heavily targeting AA and UA's top hub to hub routes from ORD; given that they already serve most of those same markets from MDW, WN take some serious flesh from AA and UA.
Add in that in BNA, WN already has a larger share of the Chicago (both airports) to Nashville local market just with their service from Midway and they are now adding ORD-BNA, major pieces of AA and UA's ORD hub will suddenly start falling apart.
They announced their COS schedules and they include flights to DEN, clearly pumping traffic into DEN in an attempt to overtake UA as the top hub carrier; WN is already the top carrier from DEN on a local market basis.
There is no other way to see this than that Southwest has gone for its competitors' jugular.
Southwest and United were battling for all the additional gates being constructed at DEN before the pandemic. This is an opportunity to poach domestic traffic, and possibly push AA off the route. Also with the launch in February, that is still prime ski season (Some resorts are open until Memorial Day) so they can funnel people wanting to ski to their new winter routes, or just fly into DEN and then drive.
Wow Southwest is so aggressive on their new O'hare flights.
Do they really need 12 flights a day between Chicago and Denver or will they reduce midway flights??
I am honestly surprised they would have more than 4 flights a day to any destination especially as travel has been depressed and with their massive Chicago base.
FYI Southwest used to fly to IAH but quit so this is really restoring previous service instead of new service.
Also, with respect to DFW they can't go there for a few more years as part of the negotiated agreement that opened up flights at Love Field to locations other than Texas and the states that border Texas.
SWA is so smart. They will remain the largest domestic U.S. carrier because they always figure it out. Point to point not hub and spoke is still their forte. No secret sauce.
Don’t understand why you would list all the Chicago connections and not mention the Houston IAH ones... ?
@mysef ... ok I now see that they haven’t released the IAH routes. My bad. Apologies! 🙂
Southwest realizes it has a business model that is attractive to many domestic business travelers that will never be a mid or top tier elite (thus making upgrades elusive, particularly during business travel time) and have no desire to sit in an airline lounge. They just want to get where they are going and get home.
I would imagine with these moves WN will pick up more of that traveler. Assuming these moves work out I see MIA to ORD and HOU or IAH.
Delighted to see the BNA to ORD connections since we do multiple international flights a year and this opens up opportunities for convenient international connections. We seldom fly any domestic trips with any other airline.
Sad San Diegan here piping in that all these changes seem to be coming at the expense of a TON of now-former nonstop routes from SAN on the Southwest network.
Surprising to see since SAN is a leisure-ish destination, which seems to be where airlines are turning their focus these days.
Given the growth over time in both Chicago and Houston, that ORD and IAH are both in many ways distinct markets from the airports WN has traditionally served in these areas.
Hobby's relative strength with respect to location and convenience/proximity of affluent travelers is much stronger than Midway's. I suspect locating the entire Chicago operation at ORD would be desirable if starting from scratch (were it feasible).
Agree with @Kevin. One route that I think everyone is missing is SAN-WAS. United has a monopoly on this route. Alaska used to fly it. I can't see how you wouldn't want flights between the biggest Navy/Marine base on the West Coast and the Pentagon. I don't create routes though.
Southwest likes to provide options to its customers. Here in the SF Bay, they control OAK, SJC, and even SMF (which for some parts of the Bay Area, like Napa, is a viable alternative), while providing a selection of flights at SFO. In the LA market, they dominate BUR, ONT, SNA, now LGB, and have a significant presence at LAX. Also, just down the road, they are a top carrier at SAN. So serving the secondary airports, with complementing service at the major airport is something they are quite used to doing. This allows them to increase total market share in a place where they already have an established customer base - and give customers more options. Also, it prevents the customers in focus cities from booking with another carrier if the major airport is preferred. They definitely now have the scale and heft that they did not in the past to take on the major carriers at their hubs, especially with leisure travel the big focus at the moment.
The real significance of WN's launching service to IAH, ORD, and MIA is that AA and UA have had hubs in the same metro areas as WN but from different airports for years. WN is blowing up the paradigm and in the process adding service between airports that duplicate or parallel some of AA and UA's top hub to hub routes, often the most profitable and highest fare markets for a carrier. When WN flies from and between both Chicago airports and Houston, Dallas and Denver, they are almost certain to become the dominant carrier which significantly erodes AA and UA's pricing power in its top markets. Add in cities like BNA where WN already is the largest carrier in markets like Chicago even before serving ORD and the prospects for AA and UA, which divide the ORD market to many cities, looks even more grim.
It is noteworthy that DL's top 4 hubs plus AS' PDX and SEA (shared with DL) hubs are in effectively single airport cities and WN could only pull this off in AA and UA hub metro areas.
No one should underestimate the magnitude of the threat to AA and UA of WN's strategy to add service to other airline hub markets outside of NYC that it did not previously serve.
Expected to see Southwest start SAT-IAH since they have such a huge footprint in San Antonio and currently there’s only UA on that route. SW could easily over take that traffic which would be huge in terms of business travel between the two cities
The airports they've managed to scoop up gate space recently has me wondering if this isn't part of a grander plan to either start trans oceanic flights, or partner up with a long haul international airline
Premier 1K here, and I’d definitely fly WN out of ORD now if price and schedule are favorable. I’m right off the blue line train to ORD so going to MDW is a non starter for me. The only downer about this announcement is that they will be flying from terminal 5 which is currently a PITA with the people mover still not operational.
@Jeremy, by WAS you mean IAD and not DCA, right? I see that UA has nonstops from SAN to IAD which is farther from the Pentagon but I get your point.
I grew up in the Chicago south suburbs and concur that Midway (MDW) is closer and more convenient than ORD. Even when later moving the the exburb of Bourbonnias, it was rare to catch a flight out of "O'Hara" like my folks would call it. Later when I started working in the airline industry and moved out west to LAS, I'd use ORD almost exclusively to visit family and friends in IL even though I had to make that nearly 70 mile trip home.
There was one time when we were waiting to board a delayed America West flight from LAS to ORD that subsequently cancelled because the crew timed out after waiting for a snow storm to let up. I immediately bought a pass to standby on WN so got to Chicago that day while other passengers were reaccommodated or had to spend another night in Vegas.
Bottom line is that this will be another back up for me when trying to return to the Windy City plus it seems like a win-win for many concerned.
@Kevin E Acosta
Im originally from Ashkum, about 20 miles south of Bourbonnais. Then moved to Bourbonnais after high school. Now live in Houston. My family and I have always used ORD over MDW and so does pretty much everyone else we know. Its just so much easier to get to the MDW. And well at least at ORD I feel safe parking my vehicle. Now live 15 minutes from IAH. I was really hoping for an IAH to ORD route, would have been perfect for me and my family.