DALLAS -- After four decades of expanding to all corners of the lower 48 states, Southwest Airlines flew into new territory Tuesday -- Jamaica, the Bahamas and Aruba.
Southwest is taking over routes flown by AirTran Airways, which it bought in 2011. The company plans to eliminate the AirTran brand by the end of the year.
Southwest Flight 1804 left Baltimore-Washington International Airport on Tuesday morning for the airline's first overseas flight -- to Oranjestad, Aruba. After the first three international destinations, it will add service next month to Cancun and Los Cabos in Mexico and will start flying to Mexico City and Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic in November.
By late this year, Southwest will operate the flights from eight U.S. cities. Still, its foreign footprint will be tiny compared with rivals American, United and Delta, which fly to Europe, Asia and South America.
Southwest Airlines Co. carries more passengers within the U.S. than any other airline, but only about 1 percent of its passenger-carrying capacity is on international routes.
While the carrier would like to grow its international system, "I think it's going to continue to be a relatively modest component of the Southwest route system for the near future, for over the next several years," Gary Kelly, Southwest's chief executive officer, told analysts and reporters in April.
Even so, Kelly recently called the international launch "our top priority for this year."
"Our focus is near-international," he told shareholders at Southwest's annual meeting May 14. "So Canada, the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and even as far as the northern part of South America are all wonderful international opportunities that we're excited about. We have more opportunities than we have airplanes over the next four or five years, and that's a good thing."
The international flights, plus expansion in New York, Washington and Dallas, are important as Southwest tries to regain momentum, analysts said. In recent years, Southwest has dealt with high fuel prices, a tepid U.S. economy and tougher competition from both old rivals and newcomers such as JetBlue and Spirit.
Southwest's traffic -- the number of miles that passengers fly -- grew by double-digit percentages from 2004 through 2006. It hasn't approached that kind of growth since, except in the year that it added AirTran. Last year, traffic grew just 1.4 percent, the second-smallest gain in this century.
Company officials have said they readily can identify 50 new cities that the carrier could reach. With North America largely saturated, the bulk of those destinations are international.
"I wouldn't be surprised if it's a couple hundred aircraft worth of growth just with the capabilities that we have today," Southwest Chief Financial Officer Tammy Romo said at a June 5 investment conference.
For passengers familiar with Southwest service, the international flights will not differ much from its domestic service, although passengers must deal with issues of customs and immigration.
While some of the new flights will be lengthy, Southwest already operates flights longer than the longest international flight, nearly 2,000 miles from Chicago Midway Airport to Punta Cana. Its three flights from Baltimore to the cities on the West Coast -- Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles -- are each more than 2,300 miles.
Information for this article was contributed by David Koenig of The Associated Press and Terry Maxon of The Dallas Morning News.
Business on 07/02/2014