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This seems to be a glaring missing route from the BWI hub from Southwest. I noticed that Delta charges what they can fares - $766 for r/t same week fares in late February. This seems like a route that Southwest could stimulate lower fares. Even Spirit launched this route as seasonal summer but that didn't seem to bring any notice from Southwest.

Anyone know if this will eventually materialize on Southwest?

I realize that Delta has the advantage with an MSP hub that fly pax to Asia, and Delta also flies all all MSP-WAS routes giving a secondary advantage. For Southwest, an MSP-BWI-Florida is a backtrack over MSP-ATL/MDW-Florida and connections via BWI aren't really that many that can't be done from another hub.

But wouldn't Southwest have some loyal FF in the Maryland side? How is Southwest loyalty amongst business pax in the Baltimore-Columbia-Annapolis area? It's the 20th largest metropolitan area so the size of the market isn't small. I'd think it could atleast start off with 1x daily BWI-MSP with an early morning departure, and maybe plane continue to DEN to help provide some fill. An early morning flight could be attractive to MD and Baltimore area business pax.

In PHL, US still flies routes like PHL-ATL and PHL-DFW (before AA merger) even though the competitor had the advantage of the bigger hub on the other side.

It's just odd that Southwest hasn't shown interest in this route, but definitely has planes in the air to offer 10x daily BWI-FLL or multiple BWI-LAS flights.

[Edited 2015-01-27 10:31:51]

If you really need to get to Baltimore on Southwest, you can with a nice stop in Chicago or Milwaukee.
Otherwise, most of the passengers would likely just be headed south to Florida, which they can already do with a number of seasonal nonstops, and via stops in Atlanta, Chicago, and Milwaukee.

Quoting rtalk25 (Thread starter): Anyone know if this will eventually materialize on Southwest?

I think there is a chance as Southwest gets more aircraft it could eventually happen. Two flights a day seems reasonable. DTW-BWI started with 4x in 2006 and is now at 3x.

MSP is one of the larger domestic holes from HOU and LAS in the Southwest network.

MSP started in 2009 with WN service only to MDW. Since then PHX, DEN, MCI and STL were all added with MKE and ATL inherited through FL.

There was talk last year of a DAL-MSP flight - time will tell if that will materialize.

[Edited 2015-01-27 11:57:38]