Southwest Airlines daily LaGuardia-Chicago, and Baltimore-Washington flights soon

Southwest Airlines is launching daily, non-stop flights between New York’s LaGuardia Airport and Chicago’s Midway Airport and between LaGuardia Airport and Baltimore-Washington International Airport on June 28, 2009. Southwest Airlines will have five daily flights to Chicago’s Midway Airport and three daily flights to Baltimore-Washington Airport, with connecting flights to a number of other destinations, a statement from Southwest Airlines said.

Southwest Airlines, the low-cost carrier based in Dallas, Texas, the United States, said that the one-way flight from LaGuardia Airport to Chicago’s Midway Airport

would start at $89, and the one-way flight from LaGuardia Airport to Baltimore-Washington International Airport would begin at $49.

Southwest Airlines is the biggest domestic airline in the United States measured by number of passengers.

The newspaper New York Times quoted an aviation analyst as remarking that New York’s LaGuardia Airport is an “opportunity” for Southwest Airlines “to break
into the country’s busiest air market.”

Southwest Airlines has already made a foray into the Washington-New York area – one of the busiest travel corridors in the United States – with flights from Islip Airport on Long Island, which is located about 50 miles from Manhattan.

According to New York Times, Southwest Airlines had bought takeoff and landing slots at New York’s LaGuardia Airport after ATA Airlines, the low-fare airline based in Indianapolis, Indiana, the United States, filed for Chapter 11 in Aril 2008 and stopped flying.

Earlier, Southwest Airlines had a code-sharing pact with ATA Airlines, which let passengers on Southwest Airlines to book tickets to destinations served by ATA Airlines.

This arrangement with ATA Airlines has given Southwest “an insight into operations at La Guardia Airport” and “we know we have built-in

demand,” the New York Times quoted Bob Jordan, executive vice-president (strategy and planning) of Southwest Airlines as commenting.

It was in March 2009 that a United States federal bankruptcy court approved Southwest Airlines’ $7.5-million bid for ATA Airlines’ 14 takeoff and landing slots.

The court gave Southwest the capacity of 7 peak-period flights a day in and out of La Guardia Airport, and, through bartering, the airline traded in slots for 8 slots spread throughout the day, Bob Jordan explained in the statement.

Two other large markets that Southwest Airlines has yet to serve fully are Atlanta and Boston, Jordan said, adding that the carrier was adding new routes across the United States in order to “attract more business customers.”

“Business flyers” he explained, “tend to buy pricier last-minute tickets, boosting airline revenue” and that the price of $49 between Baltimore and Washington was a regular fare and “not a limited-time sale price.”

It may be noted that the budget carrier JetBlue Airways had, on March 29, 2009, started offering one-way tickets between New York and Washington for just $39.

And, within a few days, airline majors such as United Airlines, American Airlines and Northwest Airlines began offering matching prices on the New York-Washington route.