Southwest Airlines starting 9 daily flights from Lambert-St Louis International Airport from May 2010

Southwest Airlines is launching 9 daily flights from Lambert-St Louis International Airport in St Louis, the United States, from May 2010. This includes 6 new non-stop services.

Southwest Airlines, the low-fare airline headquartered in Dallas, Texas, the United States, has made this announcement about one month after the United States-based American Airlines declared that it would make drastic reductions in its flight schedules from St Louis from the summer of 2010.

According to Gary Kelly, president and chief executive of Southwest Airlines, the employees of his company considered the American Airlines’ decision to cut back flights as an “opportunity” and “worked hard” to include additional capacity in St Louis.

Southwest Airlines will, from May 2010, start 2 daily, non-stop, round-trip flights each between Lambert-St Louis International Airport and Nashville International Airport (Tennessee), and between Lambert-St Louis International Airport and Los Angeles International Airport (California); 1 daily, non-stop service each from Lambert-St Louis International Airport to Raleigh/Durham International Airport (North Carolina), to New Orleans Airport (Louisiana), to Seattle Airport (Washington), and to San Diego International Airport (California).

The budget carrier also will operate daily, non-stop services between Lambert-St Louis International Airport and Minneapolis/St Paul International Airport.

The new flights will go on sale in December 2009.

Four of the cities – Raleigh/Durham, San Diego, Nashville, and New Orleans – would not have been accessible from St Louis by non-stop flights when American Airlines cuts flights to these destinations from the summer of 2010.

Southwest Airlines said it also will launch, in mid-2010, flights from the new Panama City-Bay County International Airport in Florida.  The new international airport near Panama City in Northwest Florida is scheduled to be operational by the middle of 2010.

The airline is planning 8 daily departures for Panama City. The flight schedule will be released in December 2009.

The service from Panama City will be operated through a partnership with the St Joe Company, one of the biggest real-estate developers and landowners in Florida, Southwest Airlines said in a statement.

At present, Southwest Airlines operates 72 daily, non-stop flights from Lambert-St Louis International Airport.

With the new flights taking off in May 2010, Southwest Airlines will be the dominant airline at Lambert-St Louis International Airport in terms of daily departures, according to an official of the airport.