kinglobjaw

San Diego's Balboa Park was located, near the approach path for all the airplanes given that SAN has only one (1) runway for the airliner planes.

Many of the planes landing at SAN that I saw where Southwest Jets. I also saw quite a few United and America West aircraft. At the airport Southwest has a huge check in area for WN, and in terms of gates WN has its own satelite gate area at T1. (Im estimating about 10 gates there.) All for themselves. Looking at the route network they fly nonstop to at least 10 cities. I know this is nothing to do with US, but I flew US there and just made a small observation and know Im just curious whats up.
I belive HP(now the new US) is the 2nd largest there, as I flies nonstop not only to PHX and LAS but Vancouver, Puerto Vallarta, Los Cabos, and they have many flights from PHX. And dont forget the 2 from CLT and 2 PHL. Now if they could add at least 1 from PIT, that would be nice.

jghassell

Wow, there are so many subjects in your post my head is spinning.

FCYTravis

Every major Northern and Southern California city is something like a WN "focus city" because they completely dominate the intra-California air travel market and have ever since USAir dropped the PSA routes.

Out of WN's ten biggest cities by daily departures... OAK is #6, LAX is #7 and SAN is #9. Much of that is the insanely-frequent intrastate service. 22x daily OAK-LAX. 18x daily OAK-SAN. Etc.

SPN Lifer

The question suggests its own answer.

However, for further information, I suggest a search of the Southwest forum.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=501

carl92103

I live in SAN and WN has a lot flights out of here. I was at Balboa Park one day and it seems like they have a flight landing every 3-5 minutes. The last time I flew WN they had to use the US gates

Palal

I was in SAN 2 weeks ago. This was my impression as well. Every-other plane landing seemed to be WN.

BTW. If you're ever in BWI, they have an observation deck, I believe it's outside security. You can go up there and watch the runway. My experience there was something very similar to that of SAN, on a Sunday afternoon.

Mr. July

FYI, the observation deck is currently closed - something about installing a food court in the area beneath/around (don't think it will affect the deck itself, but we'll see). With the new A pier and a lot of construction in the apron around the Southwest B and old Southwest C gates closing the gates closest to the observation deck, not sure how much you'd be able to see from there at this point anyway. I think it's scheduled to open sometime next year.

For now, there are great seats in the A-B (Southwest) food court area overlooking A 1-5, and the big glass windows. In terms of windows/light and runway views, that part of the setup kind of reminds me of the St. Louis new East Terminal, but only on a bigger scale.

cabinpressure

WN doesn't use the terms "hub" or "focus city" because they consider themselves a point-to-point airline (which they still are for many of their routes). Probably the best way to determine which airports act as "hubs" within the WN system is to look at how many nonstop destinations they have. According to WN's website, the top 15 are:

LAS - 48
PHX - 40
MDW, BWI - 34
MCO - 28
TPA, BNA - 27
HOU - 26
ABQ, LAX, STL - 21
MCI, OAK - 20
PHL - 17
AUS - 15

Interestingly 3 California cities are in the top 10 in terms of departures, but only LAX is in the top 10 in terms of destinations. I guess you could say LAS, PHX, MDW, and BWI are "hubs" and then there are a lot of "focus cities". The abundance of "focus cities" may be another reason why WN doesn't use those terms...