![]() ![]() Des Moines is another example of a shorter route that has been added and is beefing up connecting numbers. Southwest has the only direct route here, so other airlines would have to take a much longer route, but with over 80k people traveling between the cities, you would expect at least some other airline to show up. Kansas City's O&D is actually very interesting because no airlines expect Southwest show up in their O&D numbers. ![]() Louis and Kansas City without continuing on for some connection. While 295k people flew on the STL-MCI route, only 81k people flew between St. Kansas City (while this route has been around a long time) is a good example of these short routes. Louis has seen its connecting passenger traffic grow which can be seen in the growth of short routes that don't serve as much O&D to St. Both of those airports handle lots of connecting traffic, but with direct flights available, the need to connect through other big Southwest hubs has been reduced. Two routes that saw the most reduction in flights over the last 5 years were DAL and MDW, but part of that reduction happened in conjunction with more direct flights being added to new destinations. There are so many interesting routes to pick apart here, so I'll try to limit myself to some of the more interesting spots. Hopefully with a few more routes, it'll make sense to open a full fledged base in St. Louis is a focus city for Southwest and has been the largest domestic non-operating base for Southwest since 2017. Louis flew the 11th most domestic passengers of any Southwest city and all the cities in front of it were operating base for Southwest. When looking at other cities served by Southwest, St. If on phone, hold horizontal for best viewing. Louisians lots of flight options.Ĭharts and Graphs are best viewed on a desktop. All of these changes added together have made a big difference in the airport's overall numbers and given St. And many new routes were started, both short feeder routes like Wichita, Little Rock, and Des Moines (all flying over 150k passengers in 2018) and long coastal routes like Portland and Oakland. ![]() Some existing routes like BWI were upgauged where 13,000 additional seats were added in the 5-year period even though total flights decreased by 9 in the period. The expansion has occurred in many different ways, some established routes like Washington DC, that saw 770 flights in 2014, expanded to serve 1,327 flights in 2018. Only 3 airports (ATL, DAL, and FLL) flying at least 1M departing Southwest passengers have seen a higher percentage growth than STL's 43.8% over that period. Louis has played a prominent role in Southwest's overall expansion plans. Louis as a connecting airport in it's network. Southwest has served both the local passengers and been increasingly using St. Over the past decade, Southwest has continued its expansion, increasing passenger numbers 67% between 20 to 9.6M, adding new gates from the long shuttered Terminal D, and establishing new routes across the country. Louis' route map along with getting a boost of being allowed to have service direct to Dallas Love-Field beginning in 2006. The airline was steadily expanding before American (post-TWA) reduced service at the airport and then Southwest began to fill in many of the gaps appearing in St. Louis gained some Southwest flights as a good midway point for the airline's all 737 fleet. Southwest began at the airport in the late 80's serving as a low cost alternative to the dominant TWA. Southwest flies more than half of all passengers at Lambert and shows no signs (MAX airplane issues aside) from losing that dominance anytime soon. But these are all dwarfed by Southwest's additions. While other airlines might add a flight or two, they are contributing passenger gains in the tens of thousands or low hundreds of thousands. Southwest Airlines has been Lambert's largest carrier for over a decade and is almost solely responsible for the passenger gains that have brought the airport's overall passenger counts back to levels not reached since the early 2000's. ![]()
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