Southwest Airlines' plans to begin service at Boston Logan mark a continuing move by the Dallas-based carrier away from its traditional strategy of serving secondary airports, a strategy based on their lower costs and easier access. But the decision to enter Logan points up another major change: airports like Logan are different than they were a decade ago.
Back in the 1990s when it began flights to Providence, RI, (1996) and Manchester, NH, (1998), straddling Boston with two secondary airports offering easier ground access, Logan was dominated by traditional network carriers it was an airport with many barriers to entry. Now though, Logan is easier--or least less difficult--to get to with the final completion of the city's 'Big Dig' road project,
And more importantly, Logan is no longer an airport where the traffic is split two or three ways among two or three old-time airlines (American, USAir and Delta). The hub of north Americas' self-declared 'Hub City,' Logan is now an airport with a real-low fares presence. JetBlue, which has about 17% of the traffic, has the single largest share, according to the DOT. Other low-cost carriers are also players at Boston, with Virgin America entering the fray just the other week. Virgin began flights to both its San Francisco base and to Los Angeles, eating into routes that American had long dominated. And AirTran is up to nearly 20 daily flights out of Logan, to Atlanta Hartsfield and BWI.
Granted, Southwest is also entering airports that remain 'fortress' hubs, places like Minneapolis/St. Paul, where it begins service next month. But Southwest's chief executive, Gary Kelly, has an answer for those who question his recent airport choices: the airline needs the higher-paying higher-yielding business flyers that the big city airports still attract, and even where an airport's costs are higher than the passenger cost that Southwest likes, the airline's new Business Select fares are lucrative enough to overcome that.
Source: Airline Business
