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]