I thought I read previously that some of the gates have minimum usage requirements. If US didn't run X amount of flights out of them per day, they'd be eligible to forfeit them. This could be what happened.

From www.phillynews.com:

At the airport, officials said yesterday that they had told US Airways that they wanted to reclaim two gates in Terminal D that the airline had not been fully using and had been on month-to-month leases.

Airport chief of staff Jeff Shull would not say what was planned for the two gates, but if Southwest wants them, "we'll accommodate their needs," he said.

Veronica Moreno, Southwest Airlines' manager of ramp and operations in Philadelphia, confirmed that the airline had been trying for some time to secure two gates in Terminal D.

Southwest plans to increase its service from Philadelphia on Oct. 31 from 28 to 41 daily flights, and now has only four gates in Terminal E.

Asked about the logistical difficulties of dispatching flights out of two terminals, Moreno said: "We'll make it happen."



For those that don't know about PHL, Southwest's current 4 gates are at the far end of concourse E. D1/D2 are the closest gates in concouse D (a plus), but it's still a decent walk over (no moving walkway), plus you have to exit and reclear security to do between concourses. Unless they use PHL as a connecting city, that's not really a problem, plus from the E checkin counters, D1/D2 are probably just a close as their current E gates.

Previous threads have mentioned that no other gates in E come up for re-lease until 2006. There was talk about possibly Delta, Air France, and Northwest (the other occupants of E) moving to A terminal (opening up E for SW expansion). However supposedly those 3 Skyteam airlines would have only moved if someone paid for it, and neither Southwest nor PHL came up with the money.

I see Southwest getting those gates:

1. The distance isn't that great (if it was ones at the end of D, that might be a different story).

2. There's no other realistic expansion option for the next year or so.

3. Assuming SW is flying a decent number of former US flyers (control ~60% of PHL), then they already have passengers used to flying out of multiple concourses (US uses B, C, F).

Jeff