Southwest Rapid Rewards - Something's different about the pdf schedules

I happened to go to southwest.com Travel Tools to pull up the pdf schedules (http://www.southwest.com/cgi-bin/requestSchedule) for AUS and saw something I can't remember seeing in the past.

Did anyone else notice that the pdf schedules beginning March 14, 2009 are all weekly?

Here's a list of the current pdf schedules that were available before the latest schedule extension.

09/14/2009 - 10/30/2009 (47 days)
10/31/2009 - 10/31/2009 (1 day)
11/01/2009 - 11/23/2009 (23 days)
11/24/2009 - 11/30/2009 (7 days)
12/01/2009 - 12/21/2009 (21 days)
12/22/2009 - 12/28/2009 (7 days)
12/29/2009 - 01/04/2010 (7 days)
01/09/2010 - 01/09/2010 (1 day)
01/10/2010 - 02/09/2010 (31 days)
02/10/2010 - 02/10/2010 (1 day)
02/11/2010 - 03/12/2010 (30 days)
03/13/2010 - 03/13/2010 (1 day)

So there's three 7-day schedules around Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year's and four 1-day schedules, but there are five others which cover anywhere from 3 to 6 weeks at a time.

Here's the additional pdf schedules added with the latest schedule extension.

03/14/2010 - 03/20/2010 (7 days)
03/21/2010 - 03/27/2010 (7 days)
03/28/2010 - 04/03/2010 (7 days)
04/04/2010 - 04/10/2010 (7 days)
04/11/2010 - 04/17/2010 (7 days)
04/18/2010 - 04/24/2010 (7 days)
04/25/2010 - 05/01/2010 (7 days)
05/02/2010 - 05/07/2010 (6 days)

No mix of long & short schedules - just all weekly now except the last one which is 6 days. Have they done this in the past and I just haven't noticed? Or did they do it this way because they might be adding additional flights after March 14, 2009 but before May 7, 2009 and this somehow will make it easier?

Mike,

You're right. For the March Base schedule we published sequential individual 7-day schedule increments. We've not done this in the past as a general rule because, if the seven-day increments are all the same, it's just increasing our distribution workload. However, we're doing so many itinerary variations and additions/suppressions these days we're trying this as an experiment to see if this minimizes the need to "split" some of those 30-day schedules closer in as we start tinkering with the itineraries.

Sheesh.....you guys notice everything!!!!

Bill Owen/Southwest Airlines Schedule Planning

Nice catch, LSM!

I'm pretty sure that I have never seen a series of 7-day pdf schedules before. Your "additional flights" hypothesis seems reasonable to me, especially since I can't come up with any other reason. Also note that the March-to-May timeframe doesn't have any series of days with wildly changing demand, like the days near Christmas or Thanksgiving.