The new city rollouts just keep on coming down in Dallas, and the airline is taking a very Allegiant-esque turn. After putting Bozeman and Fort Walton Beach/Destin on the map, Southwest has now decided to add Bellingham, Eugene, and Myrtle Beach.
With all these new cities, I thought I’d try to do an experiment. I took the US Census 2020 population density map. Blue is the most dense, followed by green and ending up at yellow as last dense. Then I went to Great Circle Mapper and drew a 75 mile ring around each Southwest destination. Blue rings are for existing destinations from prior to the pandemic. Red includes all the new ones that have been added.
Here’s the end result, and keep in mind, if you want to see the original Great Circle Mapper map, go here.
Pretty ugly, right? I know, but listen. The Great Circle Mapper map was in a different shape than the Census map. I did my best, and you get the point. All those blue spots are covered quite well by existing Southwest markets. Meanwhile the red rings sit over some… less dense locales.
This shouldn’t be a surprise, but it is still interesting to see where Southwest feels it’s most important to fill in the blanks. I’ve heard Southwest described as a California airline based in Texas, and this certainly makes that look true. Southwest has added Fresno, Palm Springs, and Santa Barbara, going down to smaller size markets in order to provider greater coverage of the whole population. And now it’s going further north adding Eugene and Bellingham to make near continuous cover up to the Canadian border.
The obvious exception is far northern California and southern Oregon. Short of Santa Rosa — which doesn’t add much coverage — I can’t imagine an airport in Northern California that would even grab Southwest’s eye. But Medford just north of that border in Oregon? It wouldn’t shock me to see that on the list.
Neither Allegiant nor Alaska have to be happy about any of this. For Alaska, this targets their West Coast strategy. It was one thing when Southwest entered smaller California markets, but there are right in the airline’s backyard. And Allegiant, well, it has a good presence in each of these markets.
Here’s a look at current July 2021 scheduled seat capacity. No, these numbers are nowhere near what will actually be flown, but this will give you an idea of how the markets shape up.
Seats/Share By Marketing Airline – July 2021
What should stand out here is just how tiny Bellingham is. This is the gateway to Vancouver, and Allegiant has used it very well since the early days. But other airlines have not found success, and even Alaska tried and failed with some experiments, like Hawai’i. I guess Southwest is still not ready to go into Canada, but it’ll take a swing that its name recognition will draw even more people across the border. I expect fares will be low as they duke it out when Southwest enters both markets in the second half of the year.
When we look at the rest of the country, Southwest certainly has ample coverage in Florida and the Northeast. I also have to say that I really like that near continuous line of coverage from Harlingen all the way up to Minneapolis/St Paul. Some of the red circles just provide overlap from this perspective, like Chicago/O’Hare, Houston/Intercontinental, and Miami. We’ve already talked about this. But others fill in gaps where Southwest isn’t around. Colorado sees better coverage, and, well, Jackson, MS is back. But take a look at third member of this latest announcement, Myrtle Beach. That’s an area that had a little hole to fill as well.
Myrtle Beach is a place I hope to never have to visit. This place has found a home as a golfing haven and cheesy amusement capital. As you might expect, that means it draw a whole lot of ULCC service. I suppose this is when we mourn the loss of hometown hero Hooters Air.
Anyway, here’s the capacity chart.
Myrtle Beach Seat Share By Marketing Airline – July 2021
That is an incredible amount of ULCC service. If you’re Southwest, you will have a lot of really low fares in the market for nonstops, but you also have service from legacy airlines on regionals that are the way the community connects to the outside world. Southwest must be hoping to straddle both, fill all those 737s with decent fares that it can steal away from legacies, but also fill the rest of them with cheap tourists.
This could be a very tricky market. After all, on a base fare level, Southwest won’t want to be that low, because it doesn’t charge for bags like the others. That is amplified even more in a place like Myrtle where golf clubs are very popular, and Southwest doesn’t charge. We’ll know about this relatively soon since it should be filed to fly in the first half of this year.
At this point, you can see most of the big gaps on that map are yellow. Those are the places where there just isn’t a whole lot of population. But there are some other notable holes. Louisiana? Central Illinois? The Appalachians (Knoxville)? It’s hard to believe it, but these are the kinds of markets that are left for Southwest to enter domestically.
43 comments on “Southwest Continues to Blanket the US With Three New Cities”
Another hole in the LUV network is SYR. Catchment area goes from PA border into SE Ontario, Finger Lakes to Mohawk Valley. Population 2 million+/-.
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I was thinking the same thing. If it had a larger population or a tourism hook, BGM would probably better fill the hole (at least on the map) into Pennsylvania, but your right, SYR does seem to be a missing link and would cover a good chunk of Upstate NY into Canada.
TYS and XNA seem like no brainers at this point. TYS has been covered but I’ll speak a little about XNA. Pre Covid… 2018 and 2019 saw 17% plus growth in enolanements. That was good for 2nd largest growth percentage behind Sarasota in 2019. That moved XNA in the Top 100. Jan and Feb 2020 saw the 17% growth rate continue till Covid shut it down. Northwest Arkansas is 2 hrs away from TUL and traffic is increasing plus the tolls. Fewer folks are making that drive now. Northwest Arkansas is projected to double in size by 2045 to 1 million. The area is increasingly affluent thanks to the big three but because of hospital expansions and other income growth drivers. Just this week UAMS announce a new nearly 100 million dollar facility for Orthopedic care that will have 10 surgical suites. Looking at the turns that the big three did pre Covid to DFW, ORD, ATL, CLT Southwest surely could do DAL, ATL/BNA, STL/MDW, PHX/LAS, DEN and PHX with new Max 7s at 7 or 8 flights a day especially with the projected growth. Southwest wouldn’t competing for the same flyers but for the future flyers as well. It an incredible growth market
I can think of one more market WN could take a flyer on if they so choose & that’s HPN. I know, I know it’s limited as far as gate space is concerned & all that, but it serves an area that has enormous wealth who travel & would do almost anything to avoid LGA, JFK & no doubt EWR.
There are not enough slots available at HPN for a viable schedule for a new carrier. The airport is well-served with legacies to their hubs and JetBlue covers all the FL destinations.
@SEAN : funny you talk about the suburban wealth and think WN has any association to that.
Went to school (and grad school) in Knoxville here. Didn’t post it in your annual predictions post, but texted my friends back in October with the “Southwest to Knoxville” prediction back in October. Guessing service to Love and Midway. Nearest WN station is 3hrs away. Plenty of tourist traffic, but also a decent business market that the legacies dominate now.
Thanks for the report on Southwest. That certainly is a lot of towns/cities added. Hope it works out + Colorado Springs has been added, amazing. In a message dated 3/16/2021 7:06:36 AM Mountain Standard Time, hello@email.gopostmatic.com writes:
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Southwest Continues to Blanket the US With Three New Cities
The new city rollouts just keep on coming down in Dallas, and the airline is taking a very Allegiant-esque turn. After putting Bozeman and Fort Walton Beach/Destin on the map, Southwest has now decided to add Bellingham, Eugene, and Myrtle Beach.
With all these new cities, I thought I’d try to do an experiment. I took the US Census 2020 population density map. Blue is the most dense, followed by green and ending up at yellow as last dense. Then I went to Great Circle Mapper and drew a 75 mile ring around each Southwest destination. Blue rings are for existing destinations from prior to the pandemic. Red includes all the new ones that have been added.
Here’s the end result, and keep in mind, if you want to see the original Great Circle Mapper map, go here.
Pretty ugly, right? I know, but listen. The Great Circle Mapper map was in a different shape than the Census map. I did my best, and you get the point. All those blue spots are covered quite well by existing Southwest markets. Meanwhile the red rings sit over some… less dense locales.
This shouldn’t be a surprise, but it is still interesting to see where Southwest feels it’s most important to fill in the blanks. I’ve heard Southwest described as a California airline based in Texas, and this certainly makes that look true. Southwest has added Fresno, Palm Springs, and Santa Barbara, going down to smaller size markets in order to provider greater coverage of the whole population. And now it’s going further north adding Eugene and Bellingham to make near continuous cover up to the Canadian border.
The obvious exception is far northern California and southern Oregon. Short of Santa Rosa — which doesn’t add much coverage — I can’t imagine an airport in Northern California that would even grab Southwest’s eye. But Medford just north of that border in Oregon? It wouldn’t shock me to see that on the list.
Neither Allegiant nor Alaska have to be happy about any of this. For Alaska, this targets their West Coast strategy. It was one thing when Southwest entered smaller California markets, but there are right in the airline’s backyard. And Allegiant, well, it has a good presence in each of these markets.
Here’s a look at current July 2021 scheduled seat capacity. No, these numbers are nowhere near what will actually be flown, but this will give you an idea of how the markets shape up.
Seats/Share By Marketing Airline – July 2021 Data via Cirium What should stand out here is just how tiny Bellingham is. This is the gateway to Vancouver, and Allegiant has used it very well since the early days. But other airlines have not found success, and even Alaska tried and failed with some experiments, like Hawai’i. I guess Southwest is still not ready to go into Canada, but it’ll take a swing that its name recognition will draw even more people across the border. I expect fares will be low as they duke it out when Southwest enters both markets in the second half of the year.
When we look at the rest of the country, Southwest certainly has ample coverage in Florida and the Northeast. I also have to say that I really like that near continuous line of coverage from Harlingen all the way up to Minneapolis/St Paul. Some of the red circles just provide overlap from this perspective, like Chicago/O’Hare, Houston/Intercontinental, and Miami. We’ve already talked about this. But others fill in gaps where Southwest isn’t around. Colorado sees better coverage, and, well, Jackson, MS is back. But take a look at third member of this latest announcement, Myrtle Beach. That’s an area that had a little hole to fill as well.
Myrtle Beach is a place I hope to never have to visit. This place has found a home as a golfing haven and cheesy amusement capital. As you might expect, that means it draw a whole lot of ULCC service. I suppose this is when we mourn the loss of hometown hero Hooters Air.
Anyway, here’s the capacity chart.
Myrtle Beach Seat Share By Marketing Airline – July 2021
That is an incredible amount of ULCC service. If you’re Southwest, you will have a lot of really low fares in the market for nonstops, but you also have service from legacy airlines on regionals that are the way the community connects to the outside world. Southwest must be hoping to straddle both, fill all those 737s with decent fares that it can steal away from legacies, but also fill the rest of them with cheap tourists.
This could be a very tricky market. After all, on a base fare level, Southwest won’t want to be that low, because it doesn’t charge for bags like the others. That is amplified even more in a place like Myrtle where golf clubs are very popular, and Southwest doesn’t charge. We’ll know about this relatively soon since it should be filed to fly in the first half of this year.
At this point, you can see most of the big gaps on that map are yellow. Those are the places where there just isn’t a whole lot of population. But there are some other notable holes. Louisiana? Central Illinois? The Appalachians (Knoxville)? It’s hard to believe it, but these are the kinds of markets that are left for Southwest to enter domestically.
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Time for southwest to determine whether it makes sense to introduce a smaller fleet of planes (and the costs associated with that) or accept the sub-optimal returns for operating too large of an aircraft on certain routes.
Unfortunately what remains from a growth standpoint for Southwest are the smaller cities that are probably better served with smaller aircraft or low frequency routes which goes against southwest’s business model.
Considering that the latest reporting on the Southwest’s evaluation of 737MAX vs A220 is tipping towards an order for dozens of MAX 7s, it’s looking like they’re going to stick with the too large airplane for those routes.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/southwest-airlines-just-resumed-boeing-171344810.html
Yes, Cranky is right in that WN is filling out the map quite nicely at this point. The gaps that remain are smaller to be sure – but they still exist. I know that Knoxville has been mentioned above (and is a likely candidate), but there are others: Shreveport, Green Bay or Appleton, Charleston (WV), Montgomery, NW Arkansas, etc.
One of my favorite sneaky ones that WN could try is St. George, UT (SGU). Huge growth market that may well be big enough now for some LUV from WN. Nonstops to SLC, PHX, and/or LAX? A lot of people would do this in order to avoid the crowds at LAS.
I could see ATW before GRB. Large catchment area, and close enough to GRB for things like Packer’s games. All bets are off with COVID, but it’s hard to believe Appleton is making a good run at being the #2 airport in the state right now.
You make a good point. Looking at service and ATW has been growing – and it’s more convenient to a larger catchment area. That said, GRB has more than twice the gate capacity and runways long enough to comfortably accommodate any 737 variant. So the physical facility is ‘move in ready’ at GRB and less so at ATW. But I do think that one of those two would be worth WN’s time to consider. I think they’d do fairly well in that area.
Good point about the gates. Without looking, I think GRB has 12 and ATW has… 6?
Both airports have runways that can handle anything WN would throw at them. ATW sees FX A300’s daily.
NW Arkansas was (still is?) one of the most expensive airports in the country in terms of average airfares.
College town, and a good chunk of the rest of the population has disposable incomes (Walmart HQ employees and all the salespeople for the WM vendors, combined with a fairly low cost of living), plus not many other alternative airports within 1-2 hours’ drive… Surprised they haven’t already seen WN add a few leisure routes.
Depends on the route honestly. XNA/New York City wa cheap in pre covid times due to all three legacies on it. AA and DL on LGA and UA with Newark. Round Trip fares often between $200 and $250. American with all their recent adds seemed to pressure the prices down a bit.
There was a rumor that WN was going to add XNA in 2019 but couldn’t come to terms with the FBO on certain services. That was told by a pretty good insider. Shortly after Frontier entered.
Delta flying west is stupid expensive. It’s like they don’t try. Everything is a backtrack to ATL or to MSP. SLC seemly is a no brainer add that hasn’t come.
Cranky knows about Medford!
Some of us in these small towns mostly want Southwest to save us from the Allegiant experience. It’s not ideal when Allegiant is your only nonstop option, so Southwest to LAS (and OAK while they’re at it) would make my day.
Cranky, it might be fun to dig into and keep an eye on the 2nd tier airports of Oregon. Eugene, Redmond-Bend, and Medford are all similar size and have historically had service to west coast hubs from the major airlines. Allegiant is up to 5-6 routes from EUG and MFR but only 1 from RDM. Now Southwest is going into EUG and there’s sure to be some shuffling.
We know WN only flies 737s, but is there a reason it doesn’t fly 737-900s?
Cranky points out that they have not entered Canada, so that seems to be ripe for the taking. Also, there are still numerous Caribbean islands it could expand to, especially now that leisure travel will likely be the focus for most travelers in the Covid and post Covid eras. I’d also love to see BWI / Bermuda service.
Southwest would have to negotiate with their pilot union to put more than 175 seats (their 738 number) on a 737-900. The pilot contract prevents more than that number of seats on a plane so, for southwest, short of a likely tough negotiation, they’d all the cost of a longer 737-900, but none of the revenue from extra seats.
Being told there will be approximately 50 new cities total, so expect the unexpected.
I find it kind of amazing that according to Cranky’s great circle mapper the only two lower-48 states with Zero southwest service to the state, within a 75 mile radius of at least a portion of the state. are the Dakotas (plus Alaska), because of the new additions, especially with Bozeman. Perhaps flights to Grand Forks or Fargo, North Dakota to capture Winnipeg traffic is in Southwest’s future?
I wonder if Bellingham is sucsessful it will make Southwest consider Plattsburg, NY or Burlington, VT for both the recreation oppertunities in the Adirondacks or Green Mountains plus both airports proximity to Montreal.
Syracuse, NY as other posters said is also used by Canadians, coming from the Ottawa and Kingston areas, although Watertown, and Ogdensburg, NY are singifigantly closer, although neither are currently even served by Allegiant. I remember being surpised to be sitting next to a Canadian flying into Syrcause, NY the Wendesday before Thanksgiving 10 years ago who was talking about their long drive home to the Ottawa area, and how they wouldn’t do it again even though flying into Syrcause was cheaper (it suprised me since I was traveling on such a busy travel day)
I believe Allegiant was in Ogdensburg until last summer. There isn’t a lot of traffic up there to drive flights if the Canadians can’t cross the border.
I’m surprised they haven’t added Charleston, WV (CRW) yet. I would think that would be a great addition with their new strategy, it looks like a giant hole in the map. Although I’m hoping they bring back what I used to call “bus routes” where they would fly from one major city to another with a stop or 2 in the middle where some would get on and off. A couple of examples that I could think of that may work would be like SLC-SGU-PHX, PHX-YUM-SAN (or LAX), or DEN-FSD-MSP (or MDW).
CRW or ROA
What I really like about Southwest is how much they love to compete in the marketplace. They fight everybody, large and small. They leverage their network and watch their costs.
I remember when everyone said Southwest would fail if it ventured east of the Mississippi. I remember when everyone said Southwest would fail if it entered the largest markets to compete head-to-head with the Big 3. I remember when everyone said Southwest would fail if dared to enter Hawaii. I remember when everyone said Southwest could never make money flying into very small markets, operating only a handful of flights a day. I remember when everyone said Southwest could not become a dominant carrier using only one fleet type.
With business travel curtailed, all the carriers will be battling over leisure travel. Leisure travel is very fare-sensitive. So it will be interesting to watch Southwest use its strong (compared to its peers) balance sheet to leverage its market share, nationwide. There will be winners and losers emerging from the pandemic. I foresee Southwest solidly in the “winner” column.
RAP – Rapid City South Dakota – and add HERB to Mount Rushmore
Not only Mt. Rushmore but the rest of the Black Hills and the Badlands Nat’l Park as well.
Re Bellingham, look at the Canadian dollar. It’s up from 75c pre-pandemic to 80c now. Strong Canadian dollar generally means strong market for Canadians wanting to travel to the US, and also more incentive to drive across to buy tickets in US dollars rather than flying out of YVR. So in the second half of 2021, when the border is presumably re-opened to leisure travel, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there’s a ton of pent-up demand that Southwest is hoping to capture.
https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=CAD&to=USD&view=2Y
And re Alaska there: I don’t think they’ve flown out of BLI much at all except SEA Q400s and to try to head off Allegiant. As I recall, Alaska started point-to-point BLI service with LAS and Hawaii when Allegiant first entered the market.
In regards to BLI I think Southwest has a competitive edge with two free checked bags and free carry on plus personal item as well. The snacks and non alcoholic drinks are free as well. In contrast Allegiant charges for EVERYTHING except whatever personal item that fits under the seat in front of you and Allegiant considers anything over 40lbs overweight for checked bags whereas the cutoff for Southwest (and all other carriers except Spirit) is 50lbs.
One personal experience…Back about 2013 I at BLI and was going to fly home. I looked at Allegiant but choked on their fees when I found out the cutoff was 40 instead of 50lbs for overweight bags. So I caught a bus to SEA and ended up flying JetBlue to LGB as at that time JetBlue only charged for second bag and that charge was not as unreasonable as it is now.
Cranky – as a 20 year resident of The Dirty Myrtle (as the locals call it) You hit the nail on the head!!!! :
“Myrtle Beach is a place I hope to never have to visit. This place has found a home as a golfing haven and cheesy amusement capital.”
It blows me away how much people love coming here. I am very interested however to see where Southwest chooses to fly from. My guesses (in order) are BWI, BNA, MDW, DAL.
Not gonna lie; I actually kind of enjoyed visiting there. But I knew /exactly/ what we were getting into, and it was part of a larger trip through SC.
On a side note: I thought the MYR airport was a nice facility. Maybe I’m just into rocking chairs…
This seems to be an evolution of Southwest moving to a more hub+spoke model and becoming a lot less O&D focused. They typical like to enter markets with multiple daily service. A lot of these smaller airports can’t support that much service unless a lot of connection is offered. And that’s what they are doing in places like DEN, MDW, BWI, BNA, DAL/HOU.FC
I think FCA (Kalispell, MT) would be an excellent choice due to its proximity to Glacier National Park and due to the fact that the Flathead Valley is a growing area. Perhaps one of the routes could be FCA-LAS which should be called “The Philip Klevmoen Express”.
I realize Alaska is roughly the same as flying to Hawaii and WN isn’t very strong in the pacific northwest. But it wouldn’t surprise me if they took at stab at it with flights to DEN/PHX/LAS.
Long story short – the WN Florida panhandle strategy does not makes sense. I know this isn’t exactly a hot take since VPS isn’t one of their newest cities but they’ve been coming so fast and furious I forgot to add my .02 when that was announced.
1) VPS is basically 60 miles driving distance from TWO existing WN stations – ECP (Panama City) is 62 miles east and PNS (Pensacola) is 63 miles west.
2) VPS is called “Destin / Fort Walton Beach” when in fact it is neither. VPS is actually adjacent to Valparaiso (hence the name) and Eglin AFB. It is 16 miles from Destin proper and 23-26 miles from the popular Sandestin resort. As such, there is only a 36-40 mile difference from Destin to PNS (56 miles) and ECP (52 miles) compared to VPS. In fact, Sandestin to ECP is just 42 miles, just a 16-19 mile difference from VPS.
3) Catchment areas – Obviously O&D traffic isn’t as important here as this service is primarily for tourists but it’s still instructive when comparing panhandle airports. PNS makes perfect sense, the Pensacola MSA is 500,000 and the catchment area includes Mobile (429k) which does not have WN service and Daphne/Fairhope (223k) for a total of 1.152 million. However, the Crestview/Fort Walton Beach/Destin MSA is only 285,000 and the adjacent Panama City MSA is even smaller at 175,000.
Bottom line – VPS and ECP should be an either/or proposition for Southwest. This is really going to test the notion that air service to Florida beaches is a bottomless pit of demand. I see new WN service from VPS cannibalizing and duplicating their existing service to ECP and PNS. Legacy airlines can justify spoke service to all of these airports for connectivity purposes (including MOB which is 72 miles west of PNS and TLH which is 100 miles east of ECP) but WN is a completely different animal.
Put another way, nobody ever said “I was going to vacation at Sandestin but I couldn’t get a flight into VPS.”
Oh yeah – one other Panhandle Pet Peeve…
VPS isn’t the only fraudulently named airport in the area. ECP, officially the “Northwest Florida Beaches / Panama CIty” airport, is also in fact neither. It’s even more egregious than VPS in that its namesake, Panama City, is a full 28 miles away while PC Beach is 19 miles away. Nevertheless “Chicago/Rockford” is not in jeopardy!
Regarding Central Illinois, I believe I flew AirTran to Bloomington/Normal back in 1999 or 2000. That area is 2-3 hours by car from both STL and ORD, with other cities (Champaign/Urbana, Springfield, Peoria, etc) within an hour or so that might work instead.
On another note, I’m surprised that WN doesn’t 8ffer at least summer seasonal service to Bangor, Maine… Acadia is a great park, and a bit of a drive up the coast from Portland.
I think SWA is blind oversight not landing in TYS. This was Uhaul’s top inbound relocation spot in 2020 and the nation’s most visited National Park.
@henry LAX
It would blow your mind how many high income people fly Southwest. It is not an Allegiant, Frontier, or Spirit. In fact many small and medium businesses fly Southwest almost exclusively because of frequency, ease of schedule changes, no bag fees. While they do not have mileage earning abilities with International airlines like the legacies their Rapid Rewards program is very popular. Their relationship with Chase bank is very important to Chase. Not like the gimmicky credit cards that are offered by the ULCC’s
WN will most likely go from the current three gates up to four or five gates at ORD T5 in the near future
***Note….. All Gates in T5 are currently “Common Use Gates”
I suspect SWA have been looking at BLI/South Vancouver for a long long time; and it wouldn’t surprise me that their decision to not serve PAE was also involved in picking BLI. It’s G4’s busiest ‘non-focus’ city; with up to 3 departures daily to LAS alone.
BLI has a competitive advantage over YVR/YXX for US bound leisure flights, because of the American taxes imposed on crossing the border by air (about $45), versus it being free to drive.
I would expect OAK/LAS/HNL/DEN as their initial destinations; MDW is an outside chance.