It has been announced by the Wichita, Kansas chamber of commerce that Southwest Airlines has indicated to them that Wichita, KS would retain service.  Currently, Wichita has flights connecting it to Atlanta via Airtran and it will likely retain those flights through most, if not all, of 2012.  The flights will be converted to Southwest service by 2013.

There was quite a bit of speculation that Southwest would remove Wichita from the schedule like it has several other smaller cities.  I wasn’t convinced as Wichita fit kind of well into the existing Southwest system which has significant flights to Kansas City, Denver, Oklahomta City and Dallas which are all at least somewhat economically tied to Wichita.  Certainly more so than Atlanta is.

In addition, flying to Atlanta didn’t necessarily provide connection opportunities to those cities that are economically tied to Wichita.  Southwest can provide those connections and that has real value for Wichita and Southwest.  For instance, let’s say Southwest does provide service and starts flying from Wichita to Kansas City instead of Atlanta.  From that gateway city, people of Wichita can access the entire Southwest system (including Atlanta and Florida) without feeling like they’re criss-crossing the country to do so. 

I expect that Southwest will connect Wichita to either Kansas City, Denver or Oklahoma City.   Kansas City and Oklahoma City are very short stage lengths and Denver is right in the sweet spot for Southwest typical route length.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax