Southwest’s growth plans are aimed at Latin America and the Caribbean. (Image: Jim Glab)
Southwest Airlines next week will cut the ribbon not only on a new international concourse at Houston Hobby, but also on the next phase of its international growth plan — a deep dive into Latin America and the Caribbean.
For most of its existence, Southwest deliberately flew only domestic routes, but that changed with its acquisition of AirTran. Southwest has been picking up AirTran’s transborder routes and making plans for expansion, in large part with a new international wing of its Houston Hobby terminal that will open October 15.
On that date, Southwest will inaugurate a number of new routes from Hobby, including Cancun, Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta and San Jose del Cabo in Mexico; Belize City, Belize; and San Jose, Costa Rica. On November 1, it will add flights from HOU to Liberia/Guanacaste, Costa Rica and Montego Bay, Jamaica.
By the end of this year, according to a report in Bloomberg News, Southwest will be flying to 12 destinations in eight Latin American and Caribbean countries — no doubt with more to come, since the airline has reportedly identified 50 cities outside the U.S. that its 737-800s can reach. Southwest is also building another international terminal at Ft. Lauderdale, due for completion in 2017.
Other U.S. carriers also have their eyes on Latin American expansion. Just in the past few days, JetBlue launched new service to Mexico City from Ft. Lauderdale and from Orlando, and said it will begin flying from Ft. Lauderdale to Quito, Ecuador in February 2016. And American announced plans for a new route from Dallas/Ft. Worth to Merida, Mexico next March. (On the other hand, United recently suspended its nine-month-old Denver-Panama City, Panama flights, although it might revive them on a limited basis.)
All this activity by big, well-capitalized U.S. airlines must be causing some concerns for Latin American carriers that have their own plans for growth in the U.S. market, like Panama’s Copa, which recently launched a new route to San Francisco.
Do you plan to fly Southwest to Latin America or the Caribbean? Why or why not? Please leave your comments below.
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Interesting! Thanks for sharing that, Phil!
I echo the sentiment about legroom on WN. I had resisted flying them before this year — I took my first business trip in 1981 fresh out of college — due mostly to their practice of no advance seat assignments (I hate waiting in airports with an irrational passion so sitting on the plane for 20-30 minutes hoping no one chooses to sit next to me really stokes my fire). Now I’m shuttling between LAX and SJC several times a month and finding that WN’s 737 is preferable to AA’s and DL’s RJs…slightly. The real win for WN has been AA’s (Envoy) and DL’s (Compass) inability to adhere to a schedule at LAX. Even WN struggles in the chaos of LAX, but their performance is laudable compared to the other bigs. Two cancelled flights on two different trips in the same week by AA/Envoy is what drove me to WN in the first place, but I’m still far from satisfied. It’s 320 miles between Tokyo and Osaka and 340 mile between San Jose and Los Angeles (thanks, Google); at this point I’d kill for Nozomi service LAX-SJC…but I’m also a pragmatist so I know the best I can do is tolerate WN for the time being.
In one of their narrow-body planes with no leg room? Give me a break!
I like Southwest a lot, but I only use them for nonstop flights from my home airport to another U.S. destination, preferably less than three hours away. Their seats are average to below-average in comfort, and if a Southwest flight is canceled then you can be left high and dry. A few months ago I was flying SFO-LAX and my Southwest flight was abruptly canceled after I had checked my bags. (They said it was because of LAX runway work, which you’d think could be predicted a few hours in advance.) My understanding is that Southwest has no interline agreements with other airlines, so I was left with the choice of waiting many hours until the next available Southwest flight or getting a refund for my ticket and not going. And the Southwest agent acted rather like the robot from “Lost in Space,” flapping his claws and demanding that I decide within the next five seconds. I would not want this to happen late at night in some foreign airport. Unfortunately, I’ve heard that some airlines are backing out of interline pacts (e.g., Delta and American) so a few more passengers may get stuck waiting a long time in airports now. So if Southwest starts offering thrice-a-week flights to some remote airport in Central America, I’ll pass for now.
By the way, when I read your post I thought Southwest was inaugurating service to the Republic of Liberia (Africa), not the Costa Rican city of Liberia.