Southwest Airlines has announced that on Jan. 11 it will cut three flights from its lineup at Bradley International Airport — one to Baltimore, one to Chicago, and one to Tampa — but the sky-high fuel costs that have devastated other airlines are not the main reason.
Come Jan. 11, Dallas-based Southwest — ranked second in market share at Bradley — will offer seven nonstop daily flights to Baltimore, two to Chicago, and one to Tampa.
“Fuel is always a factor since it’s one of our highest costs, but this is more due to seasonal demand and giving our operation more flexibility to deal with the winter storms and blizzards in the Northeast,” Southwest spokeswoman Whitney Eichinger said. “We typically have slower travel in January and February, but you may see some of these come back in March. Our schedule goes through March 6 right now, so there’s the opportunity when we open another schedule for those flights to be added back in.”
The cutbacks are part of Southwest’s nationwide reduction of 190 flights, Eichinger said, “but it’s really just schedule tweaks.”
“It’s not anything we can control,” Bradley spokesman John Wallace said. “Southwest is still very strong here.”
High oil charges are not so significant to Southwest currently, because the airline had the foresight to hedge its fuel costs very far in advance, Southwest properties manager Stephen Sisneros said. Courtesy of those hedges, Southwest today pays $51 a barrel for oil, while the market price is around $117.
At Bradley, Southwest has 18 daily non-stop flights to Baltimore, Chicago, Tampa, Orlando, Las Vegas, and Nashville. New departure times for the remaining Baltimore, Chicago, and Tampa flights have not yet been decided, Eichinger said.
Earlier this year, the high oil costs forced Northwest Airlines to announce that in October it will eliminate its year-old popular daily nonstop round trip to Amsterdam — Bradley’s first transatlantic flight. For the same reason, Delta Airlines said it will cut Bradley’s only nonstop flight to Los Angeles in September.
