When people talk about the airline industry in California, you’ll hear about all the airlines fighting at LAX or United’s dominance in San Francisco. But the reality is that for several decades, California has been Southwest territory. Oh sure, Southwest lags at the state’s biggest airports, but it absolutely owns the secondary airports after years of methodical effort. You’ll hear some Southwest people call the company a California airline based in Texas. This is not a joke, but it does have its limits.
With Cranky Dorkfest coming up this week, I decided to focus in on Southwest’s presence in Southern California. This required going back in time, of course, so I turned to SkyGo‘s OAG schedule data starting in 1980 to tell the tale of how Southwest got where it is today.
Southwest’s first foray into Southern California came on January 31, 1982 when it started flying to San Diego. That was quickly followed by LAX on September 18. Initial flights were to Phoenix and Las Vegas. This was a natural westward extension of the Southwest network with short-haul flights that originated closer to the airline’s Texas home. It expanded the airline’s reach, but this wasn’t a challenge to the dominance of California’s original low-fare airline PSA or to copycat AirCal.
The slow growth may not have been a threat to the status quo, but things began to evolve as the 1980s went on, and Southwest’s biggest asset was its low costs, low fares, and that it always stayed ready to pounce.
Ontario – 1985
The next SoCal city to join the network was Ontario which started May 15, 1985 with service only to Phoenix. It grew over time, but it wasn’t clear what this meant in the beginning. Let’s take a look at Ontario departures over time by airline.
Ontario Scheduled Departures by Airline
OAG Schedule Data via SkyGo
Other than the small commuters which buzzed all around the area, AirCal was the big airline in Ontario as the 1980s dawned. Second was, oddly enough, Continental followed closely by PSA and Hughes Airwest. It didn’t stay that way for long.
Many of the commuter airlines were only around for a couple of years, and by the mid-1980s they were either gone or flying under a bigger airline’s code (as SkyWest did with United). Airwest was merged with others to form Republic, which didn’t seem interested in keeping much in Ontario. Western had started to fill that void in the mid-1980s, and that continued when Delta bought the airline in the back half of the decade, but it didn’t make it at that level another 10 years.
American bought AirCal and USAir bought PSA in the late 1980s, and while both airlines hoped to maintain a significant presence, it didn’t work. They realized that Southwest’s low costs and those ubiquitous $29 fares were nearly impossible for their high-cost companies to fight. So they didn’t. American started to pull back in 1990, and USAir followed not long after.
Southwest had started to grow significantly in Ontario in 1989 when it launched it first route from there to the Bay Area via Oakland. It was about 10 percent of total ONT departures at that point, but it more than doubled its size by 1991. By 1995, it had nearly doubled again. United launched Shuttle by United to provide a Southwest alternative into the Bay Area, but that failed. By 2000, as other airlines pulled back, Southwest had about half the departures at the airport.
Today, no airline challenges Southwest in Ontario. Frontier has added low-fare flying, but it is still much smaller than Southwest, and by 2026 it had shed about a third of the flights scheduled in 2024.
Burbank – 1990
Remember how Southwest started intra-California from Ontario in 1989? It knew that with American buying AirCal and USAir buying PSA that there would be opportunity, and it did not wait long to make the next big move. It was on April 16, 1990 that it started flying to Burbank. But note that while Las Vegas was one of the initial routes, so was Oakland. The intra-California flying showed Southwest’s focus had shifted to the bigger prize.
Burbank Scheduled Departures by Airline
Data via SkyGo
In 1980, PSA was the big player in Burbank. AirCal didn’t even start serving the airport until 1982. The only other significant carrier at the airport was Hughes Airwest which continued to maintain a presence even after the formation of Republic until 1985 when it gave up. Delta had built on Western’s minor presence, but it was United that tried to make the biggest move as it brought regionals under its code.
By 1990, USAir was still the biggest at the airport, but it would exit completely in 1991. United was the second biggest, but half its departures were on 30-seat props in markets like Burbank to Sacramento. There was low-hanging fruit for Southwest to attack. By 1992, Southwest was number one at the airport and double the size of number two United.
United tried to fight back again with Shuttle by United to both San Francisco and Oakland. That didn’t work.
Nobody seriously challenged Southwest in Burbank for decades with Southwest maintaining a 60 to 70 percent departure share. That began to change before the pandemic when JSX entered. Since we are looking at departure share and not seats, JSX looks a lot bigger than it really is. It is a niche operator with very few, high-priced seats.
At the other end of the spectrum, ultra low-cost carriers (ULCC) have been largely absent. Avelo made Burbank its first base in 2021, but it had left by 2025. Allegiant, Breeze, and Frontier have all tried to carve out a niche, but they’ve been pretty unsuccessful so far.
Orange County – 1994
Southwest quickly learned in the early 1990s that it had struck gold in California, but it couldn’t find a way to get into Orange County since the airport had put its noise ordinance into place in 1985. It wasn’t until 1994 when Southwest picked up some slots. By this time, it knew the most important routes weren’t to Phoenix and Vegas. It started with Oakland and San Jose on May 26.
Orange County Scheduled Departures by Airline
Data via SkyGo
In Orange County, the big airlines held on to their positions far better than elsewhere, and that’s probably due to the strong business demand and high fares alongside the barriers to entry. American actually built on AirCal’s home base, and America West had created a nice little operation of its own that went north-south and not just to its hubs in Phoenix and Las Vegas.
Southwest entered, but it couldn’t grow as fast as it normally would because of the slot restrictions. It wasn’t until 2004 that Southwest became the largest airline at the airport, just barely squeaking past United. But every time one airline would take a step back, Southwest would be there. And while it sometimes would have to give back its gains thanks to the way the slot rules worked, Southwest never did that unless forced.
During the pandemic, airlines like Allegiant and Breeze were able to scrounge up some slots, but the prospects for future growth are relatively slim for everyone. In 2026, Southwest has north of 27 percent of scheduled departures which is well beyond second place Alaska’s 15 percent.
Long Beach – 2016
The one big airport Southwest hadn’t entered in the LA Basin was Long Beach, my home airport. That’s because Long Beach was slot-restricted, and none were available for aircraft the size of Southwest’s B737s by the time Southwest was interested. Why the sudden interest? As demand increased in Orange County, Southwest had to give back slots. Long Beach was another way to serve those travelers, and it was an airport with a weak existing tenant in JetBlue.
JetBlue held the lion’s share of slots at the airport, but then something happened. Airplanes got less noisy, and Southwest found a way in on June 5, 2016.
Long Beach Scheduled Departures by Airline
Data via SkyGo
Long Beach was generally the least-coveted airport in the Basin. It was the home of Jet America in the 1980s until that airline was bought by Alaska, but the brief bulge of service went away. For most of the 1990s, it was a sleepy airport with very little service. In 2001, JetBlue showed up and took all the remaining slots.
Unlike Orange County, Long Beach’s noise ordinance is actually based on noise. And as noise decreased, that created the opportunity for more slots. Southwest announced it would start flying to Oakland as part of its plan to blanket secondary markets in Southern California. JetBlue initially tried to fight back, but it gave up completely during the pandemic, at which point Southwest took over all of that airline’s slots and more.
It was a long-term plan with short term bursts of action alongside methodical growth. In the end, Southwest has created something of a fortress in these markets. We’re talking about seats, but that can get noisy because of locals versus connections. Look at the LA Basin to the San Francisco Bay Area for all of 2025. Southwest flew 49 percent of all the passengers. Number two United was under 20 percent. Or look just at LAX to the Bay Area, a hotly-contested market. Southwest flew a third of all passengers with Delta and United coming in a close second with each shy of 20 percent.
That doesn’t mean everything has been a wild success. During the pandemic, Southwest decided to go smaller, and it added Palm Springs and Santa Barbara. Those markets have not seen much growth, and Southwest remains relatively small. Perhaps that changes in the future, or maybe it’s just that the legacy airlines have become so much better at competing with the current version of Southwest that the failures of the 1980s and 1990s won’t be repeated. But for all the big secondary markets in Southern California? That ship has sailed, and Southwest is the dominant carrier.
Tomorrow, I’ll look more at how Southwest’s strategy has shifted in the region in the last decade.
