Southwest has come to dominate in Southern California, as we learned yesterday, but the airline has changed a lot in the last several years. In part two of Cranky Dorkfest-week coverage of Southern California, I thought I’d dig out the data via Cirium and look at just how Southwest has been performing in the region. There were some surprises.
To start, let’s just take a look at Southwest’s daily departures by airport.
Southwest Average Daily SoCal Departures By Quarter
Data via Cirium
Up until 2022, LAX and San Diego were similarly-sized, but then they diverged. San Diego rapidly completed its post-pandemic recovery while LAX never actually got close. Sure, in San Diego Southwest has had to fend off Alaska, but at LAX, Southwest could have decided to fight everyone. It briefly started to build back LAX, but then in 2024, it retrenched.
Meanwhile, the secondary airports in the LA Basin recovered fairly quickly with Long Beach growing rapidly for Southwest after JetBlue walked away during the pandemic. But the departure numbers have sagged at all the airports versus their peaks, except for Orange County where Southwest has flown as much as it could.
Some of this may be due to increasing gauge offsetting a reduction in flights, but that has only been the case in four of the six airports:
Southwest Average Seats per Flight by Airport By Quarter
Data via Cirium
Southwest’s systemwide gauge has increased as the airline has retired B737-700s and added MAX 8s. But those airplanes have been largely non-existent in Burbank and Orange County.
In Burbank, it’s a facility issue. The Burbank airport terminal is, uh, shall we say, compact. There just isn’t room to flow larger airplanes through there easily, so Southwest has kept is -700s flying. In October, the new terminal opens. I expect we will see changes.
At Orange County, it’s the very stupid noise ordinance which does nothing about noise. The system is actually an annual passenger cap, so Southwest is incentivized to fly smaller (and yes, they are louder) -700s so it can have more flights without hitting the passenger cap. This system is stupid, but it is reality.
At the other four airports, gauge has risen so perhaps it’s not a surprise to see departures fall off a bit. But is Southwest filling its airplanes? Instead of looking at this as a static number, I’m going to compare each airport to the systemwide number. I found this fascinating.
Southwest Load Factor by SoCal Airport vs System
T100 Data via Cirium
The big winner here is clearly Long Beach. The Long Beach loads were much lower than system for so many years, but once Southwest found the right mix and cut back a bit on flights, load factor soared. It has now bested system average nearly every month since Nov 2025. That is a big turnaround.
Burbank has also seen good upward movement, though it’s surprising to see it less than average since it nearly exclusively has the smaller -700s. Southwest still runs a more business-friendly schedule in that market, and it gets pretty high yields. That just results in lower loads, especially on the short hops. The same story plays out in Orange County, but the loads are better since the airport’s passenger cap keeps a lid of capacity.
San Diego is an interesting one in that even with all of the big capacity increases in the Alaska fight, it has maintained higher loads than system average.
If there’s anything that looks weak here, it’s Ontario. It has been consistently below system average loads and hasn’t made gains like the other markets.
But in the end, load factor is only one piece of the broader puzzle. What really matters is stage length-adjusted unit revenue. How much are those flights generating? This I can only get quarterly with this backwards look (new data is monthly, but there’s not enough of it), and here is how it looks compared to the system.
Southwest Stage Length-Adjusted Unit Revenue by SoCal Airport vs System
DOT O&D Data via Cirium
Again, Long Beach. Just look at how much worse that airport did compared to the system. It was the SoCal laggard for its entire existence. It slowly improved, but then Q1 of this year was the first time it did better than system average. It has been above LAX and San Diego on an aggregate basis, and it is gaining on Ontario. It is poised to keep up that performance.
Orange County and Burbank continue to show that the strategy of smaller planes, low loads, and high fares continues to work for the airline. It will be very interesting to see what happens when bigger planes start moving into Burbank starting November. Can it maintain this kind of performance? Everything looks rosy for now.
Ontario continues to be above average, but it has fallen off as of late. It’s not that unit revenue is declining, but it’s just not growing as fast at the others that are excelling. And that brings us to the two big airports.
LAX continues to be smaller, and it continues to underperform the system. Remember, this is only the revenue side of the equation. From a cost perspective, LAX is by far the most expensive airport to operate from in the set, so this has to be a real concern for the airline with no easy answer.
Lastly, there’s San Diego. It has been a real struggle, but there is a strategic investment going on there trying to fight off Alaska. It’s not surprising to see that, especially during the last two quarters when San Diego’s new terminal opened and capacity expanded. This is a long-term project, and in the short run, profitability is suffering. Things will settle down there.
