Southwest got a big hand in the New York City market when it was able to lease slots at Newark Liberty International Airport as a result of the Continental/United merger.  Their original announcement had them flying to Chicago and St. Louis and those were good starts. 

Now Southwest has announced additional destinations from Newark and they include Houston, Phoenix, Denver and Baltimore.  Newark has suddenly become the more important airport for SWA as a result, too.

Those destinations will allow them to fly to their focus cities and it’s notable that 3 of the 5 initial destinations are fairly long haul flights for SWA.  Newark will be the real focus city for SWA rather than La Guardia and here is why:  they’ve already got a bigger toehold and that is going to make it a more and more cost efficient operation but, more importantly, they aren’t range restricted at Newark like flights from La Guardia are. 

Newark lets them connect people to focus cities better and grow the business.  Expect some flights to Atlanta in the future.  Airtran had them and gave them up but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth it for SWA.  Airtran had just a small handful to Atlanta and mostly on their 717s.  Southwest can increase that frequency and with larger aircraft (come 2012) too.

Will SWA languish at La Guardia?  No but they’ll grow much more slowly and organically because those slots are valuable and they’ll cost a lot for SWA to acquire.  But having Newark in the area lets them form a good NYC base and get the economy scale they need.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax