Southwest Airlines starts Boston-Chicago, Boston-Baltimore direct services

Southwest Airlines, the budget carrier based in Dallas, Texas, the United States, has started 10 daily flights from Logan International Airport in Boston. The airline has added five non-stop flights between Boston’s Logan International Airport (BOS) and Chicago Midway International Airport (MDW), and five non-stop flights between Boston’s Logan International Airport and Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI).

For one-way flight to Chicago, fares start at $89. For the flight to Baltimore, fares for one-way flight begin at $49.

A statement from Southwest Airlines, the leading low-cost airline in the United States, said that the new routes are expected to benefit especially the New Englanders.

However, the addition of the 10 routes will mean an overall decrease in the number of Southwest Airlines’ services for the first time – with the new fights having been taken out of the so-called weaker routes.

The carrier has cut its flights by 5 per cent so far in 2009, on account of high costs of aviation turbine fuel as well as shrinking demand for air travel.

It may be noted that Boston’s Logan International Airport is a low-cost hub dominated by JetBlue Airways, headquartered in New York. And, JetBlue Airways has Airtran Airways and Spirit Airlines as competitors at Logan International Airport.

Southwest Airlines – which has a total of 3,300 departures daily –said in the statement that it is connecting with Boston’s hectic business network expecting more business passengers, who, on an average, pay more.

It was on June 28, 2009, that Southwest Airlines launched services to LaGuardia Airport in New York, thereby creating more chances for additional connections along the US East Coast.

According to aviation analysts, starting ten daily flights from Boston’s Logan International Airport will create what they describe as an extra north-to-south connection between cities that are well-liked by business travellers.

What is more, flights from Boston will mean that passengers of Southwest Airlines can make use of easy connections to 48 other cities in the United States.

Only around a quarter of Southwest Airlines’ total passengers, the analysts added, connect on Southwest, when compared with nearly two-thirds of passengers on competing carriers which have dedicated hub-and-spoke traffic.