Southwest to fly out of Pittsburgh
IMPERIAL, Pa. (AP) – Southwest Airlines will begin offering 10 nonstop daily flights to four cities from Pittsburgh International Airport in May, the company said Thursday, creating overlapping service areas similar to those it has established with great success elsewhere. The Dallas-based airline will fly from Pittsburgh to four of its strongest markets – Chicago, Philadelphia, Orlando, Fla., and Las Vegas – starting May 4. Travelers will be able to make connecting flights to 37 other markets from those cities, including Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood, Fla., Los Angeles, Oakland, Calif., Houston, and Seattle/Tacoma.
Pittsburgh will serve as an opportunity for the airline to expand capacity, said Gary Kelly, chief executive officer.
“Pittsburgh is an exciting new frontier for Southwest and we think local travelers will embrace our low fares,” Kelly said.
The airline will mark its expansion into Pittsburgh by offering $29 one-way fares to Philadelphia International and Chicago Midway airports through May 26.
Upon Southwest’s announcement Thursday, US Airways, the airport’s dominant carrier, immediately dropped fares to Chicago, Philadelphia, Las Vegas and Orlando, Fla. to match Southwest’s prices.
Pittsburgh, a Rust Belt city with a declining population, may seem an odd choice for an airline that has been extremely cautious when entering new markets. But experts say the decision falls in line with what the company has done in the past.
“It’s circling the wagons again,” said Michael Allen of Back Aviation Solutions, an aviation consulting firm. “If you look at Boston on the map and then draw circles around Manchester, Providence, Hartford, where Southwest operates, you can do the same around Pittsburgh and see the same thing. What is happening there is pretty classic Southwest.”
The airline has created interlocking circles in markets from the eastern seaboard to the West Coast, seeking out airports with favorable yields and what it perceives as a gap in service.
The same pattern is emerging in the Mid-Atlantic, where Southwest serves Columbus and Cleveland, Ohio, Buffalo, N.Y, Baltimore, and now Pittsburgh.
The first inklings of a service gap appeared in May, when Pittsburgh’s dominant carrier, US Airways, said it was pulling hub status and would instead call the airport a “focus city.”
US Airways slashed daily flights from 373 to 229 late last year, down from more than 540 before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
It took Southwest less than two months to announce it was moving in.
Southwest is repeating the same concentric circles to encompass markets in Ohio, Maryland and New York, all states that officials at Pittsburgh International Airport said they have lost customers to just because Southwest flies out of airports there.
Airport officials estimate that between 1.2 million and 2 million passengers every year hop in their cars and drive out of the Pittsburgh metro area for Cleveland or Columbus, Ohio, Baltimore and Buffalo, N.Y., – all airports served by Southwest.
The U.S. Department of Transportation calls it the “Southwest Effect.”
Pittsburgh International opened a $360,000 media campaign to quash the effect, but without much success.
Another facet of the Southwest effect in the past has been lower fares across the board and an increase in travel.
That would be tremendous news for an airport, and a region, that is a microcosm of the troubled airline industry.
While flights by carriers other than US Airways were up 18.7 percent in 2004, overall airport traffic fell 7 percent to 13.27 million passengers.
That number illustrates just how dominant US Airways is in Pittsburgh, where the carrier’s flights were down 12.6 percent compared with 2003.
Pittsburgh International was built for $1 billion just 12 years ago, largely to the specifications of US Airways, an airline that has slashed service to the airport as it tries to emerge from bankruptcy.