Southwest has been working on adding international destinations to its system for several years now.  With the purchase of Airtran, it gained an airline already doing it and it will soon integrate those international destinations into its system as codeshares.  That will be a big moment.

Question:  What airline with international destinations was Southwest’s first experience with international destinations?

The answer after the fold:

It was Icelandair in 1997.  Southwest arrived at an interline agreement with Icelandair where it exchanged passengers and luggage with Icelandair in Baltimore.

Later, it set its eyes on ATA as a partner for international destinations and that partner evaporated with the demise of ATA in 2008.   Then Southwest announced a multi-partner codeshare agreement between itself, WestJet and Volaris.  After a long time spent in trying to make each other’s systems work, WestJet pulled out of the agreement and Southwest only managed to hack together a “codeshare” solution with Volaris by having customers buy two tickets and interlining them between the two airlines.

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