Are flights being deleted from Spring schedule to shift to Hawaii?
 

Overnight Southwest emailed me schedule changes for a couple of April and May dates on which I had booked the last flight of the day. That flight, presumably very lightly loaded, with few tickets sold, has been deleted from the schedule.

Have others here received similar cancellations of off-peak flights? That would indicate that Southwest is marshaling the aircraft needed for mid-April or earlier service to Hawaii.

Maybe, maybe not.

I would guess they have an ongoing list of city pairs/flights showing the next ones to be dropped due to loads. Hence the shorter advance booking options compared to the majors.

They constantly shift flights around based on demand and where they need planes. With over 700 planes, it is hard to say what specific flights will be dropped, or that any flight being dropped is DIRECTLY linked to Hawaii.

There's a schedule extension out today. Could explain some deleted CA runs.

• Saturday-only DAL-CRP nonstop service
• Weekend-only RIC-TPA nonstop service
• Return of BDL-FLL, BUF-FLL, BOI-MDW, EWR-MCO, RIC-MCO, and MKE-SEA seasonal nonstop service

https://www.swamedia.com/releases/re...light-schedule

Those seem like some weird adds for shoulder season.

You learn something new everyday, I thought BDL-FLL was year round....

cut this summer for FLL runway improvements.

Yes, they did. They reduced to weekend service, not daily flights.

Yeah, that's why they reduced the flights. Due to FLL runway construction. Hopefully in a few months. They will bring it back to normal schedule.

Sure it is not just Hawaii...each carrier has a finite number of slots in and out of each airport each day so that are constantly rationing and prioritizing those routes accordingly.

Not at all. Very few U.S. airports have slots restrictions. The effective limit is set by gate productivity (take offs per hour) and length of operational day.

That is correct. DCA, LGA, EWR, JFK, LGB, SNA is a slots restrictions. Other US airports does not have slots restrictions.

There are a handful of airports operating under military-civilian joint use agreements where the local civilian government contracts with the DoD typically for X number of daily runway slots. (For VPS, the number I've heard is somewhere around 90 a day) The highest volume of these is Charleston, SC that does about four million passengers a year.

I thought EWR got rid of slot restrictions a few years back.

Sure. With schedule extensions. I've never known Southwest to cancel existing, booked flights in the way nsx is noting. It would make sense that the planes are for Hawaii, since it's being added without much notice.

Listen to latest earnings calls from Southwest and American and you will learn a lot more about scheduling? Google, Investor relations, at either listen to or read the confernce call . Southwest's call was really interesting concerning Hawaii flights.

Isn't the principal advantage having a shortest-in-industry scheduling window to inhibit that?