Southwest adding direct flight to Denver

[betts]

Southwest adding 14 flights at DIA
Kelly Yamanouchi
Denver Post Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 06/27/2007 10:33:45 AM MDT


"Southwest Airlines Co. today said it will add 14 more flights out of Denver International Airport. (AP | MATT SLOCUM)Southwest Airlines is continuing to grow in Denver, announcing today it is adding 14 flights out of Denver International Airport. With the additional flights, Southwest will start flying from Denver to Seattle, Albuquerque, Amarillo, Oklahoma City and Austin. "

So, now we have an alternative to United and Frontier. I like Southwest's simple one way option, which most airlines don't have. This service will begin November 4, 2007.

[jbrown84]

score!

[chrisok]

That's probably bad news for Frontier. Of course it's not great for United either.

[bombermwc]

Well this is an easy change to make....its sort of like saying youve added direct flights to Dallas. So many people have to fly to Denver and change planes anyway, its not as though we're really changing a lot here. Same could go for Atlanta or Cleveland. I'm glad they are touting it as a direct flight, I'm just not sure that it will make much of an impact other that to add another line to the "direct flight" list.

[Misty]

I wish we had a direct flight to Austin.

[chrisok]

I wish we had a direct flight to Austin.

You're wish has come true.

Expressjet has two daily flights to Austin. One at 6:30 AM and one at 2:15 PM.

[Oh GAWD the Smell!]

AWESOME!










/gets free tickets on SWA from time to time
//has friends in Denver

[venture]

Yeah great move...this is dangerous for F9. Southwest is clearly making a power play to try to kill Froniter. I'm sorry, F9 has a superior product to Southwest. Anyone who hasn't flown them has no idea.

Anyway...here is the gist of the Southwest schedule changes with DEN coming in...

Baltimore - 1 Daily
Dallas - 5 Daily
Denver - 2 Daily
Houston - 4 Daily
Kansas City - 4 Daily
Las Vegas - 1 Daily
Phoenix - 3 Daily
St. Louis - 2 Daily

[BG918]

Awesome, the more flights from OKC to Denver the better!

[chrisok]

I agree it sounds nice that there are more flights to Denver. The problem is that there probably isn't enough demand for ten daily flights combined. It's not like there's a waiting list of people to get on a flight to Denver. Ultimately, this is going to hurt Frontier. United will still have a solid presence in OKC, especially because of connecting traffic. For Frontier, passenger counts have slowly, but steadily risen over the past 5 years or so and they now have 3 daily flights. I agree with Venture, the service and aircraft are fantastic. It's probably the best we have. Yet, I think they'll get crushed by this.

Now if you love Southwest, and that's cool if you do, this should be good news. In my opinion, this does nothing for Oklahoma City. It opens up basically zero new destinations for us. Southwest hasn't opened a new destination for us since Phoenix. They've been waiting for other airlines to build up service, then they come in after the fact and kill most everyone else off. Then fares go back up. Las Vegas is a perfect example of this. (Killed Allegiant and reduced US Airways to almost nothing.) Having said that, I will admit that the Baltimore flight is good because we had no east coast flight on Southwest, and there is a big demand for flights to D.C.

I'd just like to see them actually take a chance on us, and open new service for a change.

[CuatrodeMayo]

Compete or die. That is the message the Airlines and Detroit need to get. No more government "protection".

[y_h]

Yeah great move...this is dangerous for F9. Southwest is clearly making a power play to try to kill Froniter. I'm sorry, F9 has a superior product to Southwest. Anyone who hasn't flown them has no idea.

You are correct . . . for now. It will be interesting to see what happens if WN moves forward with reserved seating and in-flight entertainment as is apparently being considered (at least according to yesterday's WSJ). Naturally those changes will take quite a while to implement and there's also no telling what kinds of changes will come to the price points of WN flights once the changes are made (and this doesn't even factor in the expiration of WN's once ridiculously favorable fuel futures contracts).

[Jen at Airports]

Good to see everyone is keeping up with news at Will Rogers! I wanted to let everyone @ OKCTalk know that I will be on family medical leave through the month of August, so I will be somewhat out of pocket. I will still be making periodic updates to flyokc.com, but probably not as often as usual.

[venture]

There is going to be an interesting shift in WN (Southwest) coming up here. The service changes they are going to have to make as their fares go up. There was a good story in Aviation Week a few weeks back about the finance crunch WN is about to go through. They have operationally lost month about 5 or 6 quarters out of the last few years. The only thing keeping them profitable is their fuel hedging business. They are about to lose their advantages on that side of the company, and will bring them into a period of falling into the red overall.

Nature of the beast. They lose money on a majority of their routes, but it is the route network that keeps them popular. Its interesting to see some cuts that have happened...notably cross country flights to California from Philadelphia and Baltimore. A moral victory for the US Airways gang that has been beat up by them for years.

Where does WN go from here in OKC? Who knows. If they continue to add markets, Chicago shouldn't be far behind. I'm also shocked they aren't running flights to Florida.

Again...I don't like it, but we'll see what happens. Frontier needs to make a move. The big thing is advertise...their commercials are the best anywhere.

Frontier Airlines

[OUman]

Btw folks, it's 2 daily roundtrips between OKC and DEN, not one. Also, just because one additional airline comes on to a route doesn't necessarily mean the "killing off" of another airline. The new service only goes to show that more passengers are now flying/showing interest in flying in greater numbers from OKC. As for Frontier Jet Express, it has already upgraded one of its flights between OKC and DEN to an E170, which is a much better regional jet compared to the CRJ 700. I believe it also has the in-seat video screens in all Y-class seats.

I'm also shocked they aren't running flights to Florida.

WN tried Florida service (Sat-only nonstops between OKC and MCO, which were an extension of the Sat-only nonstops between LAS (Las Vegas McCarran) and OKC), but they failed on yields. I dunno, all Florida service that has been tried has failed so far to/from Oklahoma City. Expressjet might have a better chance, once it gets established in the market.

[venture]

Its pretty much a given what WN is trying to do in DEN. Nearly every route is targeted at F9. They are trying to do something to fix their growing revenue problem, and knocking out some competition is the best way to do it.

There will also be some additional changing with Frontier in November. Most of the CRJ-700s flown by Horizon will be gone. The morning flight will then go back to the Airbus A319 the operated a bit earlier this year, and the other two flights will finish the transition to the Embraer 170s.

Regarding Florida...I think the only way to really jump start Florida here is will an Allegiant model. Selling vacation packages and then having the air service there as well. The only task will be hitting the mark of 80% load factors on every flight, much like cities 1/8th the size of OKC are doing right now for them.

[jdsplaypin]

Maybe i'll get lucky like Misty... i wish we had a nonstop flight to Portland

[HOT ROD]

Im happy the A319 is coming back.

Should it be changed though to come to OKC during a rush time to fill it up? I've actually flown the A319 and almost half of it was empty. This was when Frontier first came to the city of course, but still I was amazed that they flew it empty. I figured they needed the plane for the return flight in the am.

I guess it's not THAT expensive to fly a 319 525 miles to OKC from DEN?