Southwest Airlines Expands Its Networks, Grows At Long Beach Airport

After the devastating operational meltdown that left hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded across the United States during last year’s holiday season, Southwest Airlines has resumed its “business as usual” mode doing what it has been doing best for over 50 years: flying customers and delivering results for its investors.

Despite the cost of the heavy disruptions that almost brought its network to a standstill towards the end of December, Southwest was able to deliver a profit during the last quarter announcing a dividend of $0.18 per share that will be paid on Mar. 29.

Three New Services At Long Beach Airport

In addition to that the Texas-based carrier also announced an expansion of its domestic network adding 21 new routes that will start between July and September 2023. Three of these routes will launch from Long Beach Airport (LGB), the third airport in the Los Angeles area served by Southwest after Los Angeles International (LAX) and Burbank.

On Jul. 11 daily flights will commence to Colorado Springs, CO and El Paso, TX, while on Sept. 5 there will be a new daily service to Albuquerque, NM.

Long Beach Airport used to be the main base of low-cost airline JetBlue in Southern California before the New York-based carrier progressively moved the focus of its West Coast operations to Los Angeles International and eventually decided to stop serving the airport in October 2020. After the departure of JetBlue, Southwest Airlines spotted an opportunity and opened a base at Long Beach. With these new services just announced, now Southwest serves 22 destinations as far east as Orlando, FL and as far west as Honolulu.

Other routes to be launched include a mix of services restarted after the pandemic-induced hiatus and brand-new routes, as well as seasonal and year-round connections.

One of those is the flight from Baltimore International (BWI) to Oakland International (OAK), one of the very first transcontinental routes that were started by Southwest Airlines to connect two of the main hubs in their network.

Here is the complete list:

• Baltimore (BWI) to Oakland (OAK)
• Denver (DEN) to Richmond (RIC)
• Houston (HOU) to Raleigh (RDU)
• Dallas (DAL) to Philadelphia (PHL)
• Las Vegas (LAS) to Minneapolis (MSP)
• Los Angeles (LAX) to Portland (PDX)
• Austin (AUS) to Pittsburgh (PIT)
• Charlotte (CLT) to Houston (HOU)
• Houston (HOU) to Lubbock (LBB)
• Houston (HOU) to Ontario, Calif. (ONT)
• Houston (HOU) to Philadelphia (PHL)
• Houston Intercontinental (IAH) to Phoenix (PHX)
• Las Vegas (LAS) to Little Rock (LIT)
• Long Beach (LGB) to New Orleans (MSY)
• Nashville (BNA) to Islip/Long Island (ISP)
• Nashville (BNA) to Omaha (OMA)
• Austin (AUS) to Jacksonville (JAX)
• El Paso (ELP) to Orlando (MCO)

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Vanni Gibertini

Vanni fell in love with commercial aviation during his undergraduate studies in Statistics at the University of Bologna, when he prepared his thesis on the effects of deregulation on the U.S. and European aviation markets. Then he pursued his passion further by obtaining a Master’s Degree in Air Transport Management at Cranfield University in the U.K. followed by holding several management positions at various start-up carriers in Europe (Jet2, SkyEurope, Silverjet). After moving to Canada, he was Business Development Manager for IATA for nine years before turning to his other passion: sports writing.

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