It’s been talked about for eons, and now, it is actually happening. Southwest is going to start its first redeyes on February 13 with an arrival on Valentine’s Day in the first five markets. I spoke with COO Andrew Watterson to learn more about the airline’s plan.
When it launches in Feb, there will be five redeyes:
- Las Vegas-Baltimore
- Las Vegas-Orlando
- Los Angeles-Baltimore
- Los Angeles-Nashville
- Phoenix-Baltimore
In LA – Nashville, this is actually a new trip in the market. In the others, it’s just a retiming of an existing frequency. In some cases, the westbound flight may move to feed the redeye, but in others, it’s just really about freeing up aircraft time so they can do other things during the day. Remember, at Southwest, it’s rarely just a simple out-and-back, and aircraft flow through the system.
These redeyes actually solve a lot of problems for Southwest, especially with connectivity. Since COVID, those evening West Coast flights have been weaker as business travel day trips have dropped. Now, those evening trips from, say, Burbank to Las Vegas, will bring more passengers to connect on to the redeyes.
Further, those early morning originators from the airline’s biggest cities to smaller stations could use the help as well. When that airplane lands in, say, Baltimore, passengers will be able to connect right on to that morning originator to, say, Manchester (NH).
I know what you’re saying… these are just five flights. Big deal. But more will be coming quickly. This first round was designed to go between the airline’s crew bases just to make sure that everything is working as planned.
The second tranche will come quickly in March, followed by the third tranche in June. That will be the initial build-out with another round expected to come in 2026.
The biggest question in my mind was… when do Hawaiʻi redeyes come? After all, that adds real utility for travelers who can’t get from the islands to the east coast on Southwest at all. It will be coming in one of these initial rounds, but exactly when has not yet been determined.
Southwest knows that the redeyes from the islands are really important, so it will happen. Some of these will end up replacing the morning/mid-morning flights that help create connectivity to the Midwest now, but it isn’t clear if those morning flights will go away completely. This seems unlikely since Andrew mentioned that travelers from Hawaiʻi to connecting western destinations like having the ability to do it without a redeye.
I was also curious to know if anything would be different on a redeye in terms of onboard experience. The answer is no. It’ll be just like any other Southwest flight. Southwest has its crews divided into AM and PM, and these will just be operated by the PM crews flying later than normal.
This is just one more effort by Southwest to improve utilization on its fleet to help lower unit costs. It pairs with Southwest’s efforts to reduce aircraft turn times by 5 minutes. This isn’t just reducing scheduling of turns but actually fixing processes to make turn time shorter. That’ll start to be reflected in the schedule in November.
