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rexpokinghorn, welcome to FlyerTalk. Let's move this to our Southwest Rapids Reward forum to see if we can elicit some answers for you. Ocn Vw 1K, Moderator, TravelBuzz.
It looks like a temporary schedule change. Beginning March 8 WN909 flies RNO-PDX departing at the same time WN34 does now. I'd guess it was a seasonal scheduling issue. Southwest changes their schedules frequently in an attempt to match fluctuating demand.
My guess is your flight was impacted by this optimization:
Quote:
And you guys have told us—by your flying habits!—that you don’t like flights before 7:00 a.m., nor ones after 8:00 p.m. Our new schedule optimization “algorithm” (again, LOVE that word—sounds so educated!) allows us to move departure times around within individual markets with nearly surgical precision. We tell it we know about the earliest and latest desired flights in each market—literally, we tell the optimizer what departure times you guys want—and the resulting schedule is one that mirrors more closely than ever what you, our Customers, want.
For the January ‘09 schedule we really took advantage of this new capability and made the earliest flights later and the latest flights earlier. The result: the vast majority of the flights that are trimmed in the January schedule would have departed in the 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. or 8:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. time frames.
I believe the 8:30 -9:55 (time has varied through the years) PHL-PIT flight is gone. It was nice to come home from work on a holiday weekend, let the airport craziness subside, get to the airport 25-30 mins before the flight (no checked bags obviously and OLCI) and go out...
