Continuing its aggressive expansion into leisure travel markets, Southwest Airlines stated it should add new seasonal nonstop flights between Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport and Miami International Airport beginning June 12 and persevering with each Saturday by means of Sept. 4.
Southwest can be competing with American Airlines on the Milwaukee-to-Miami route.
U.S. airways are responding to an uptick in demand for leisure journey as enterprise journey stays all however nonexistent.
Southwest is the market share chief at Milwaukee Mitchell, carrying half the passengers on the airport.
With Monday’s announcement, Southwest Airlines now serves seven Florida cities nonstop from Milwaukee.
Dallas-based Southwest has expanded aggressively because the COVID-19 pandemic started, launching or saying service at 17 new airports.
From Milwaukee, Southwest has made the next air service additions to Florida, in keeping with an announcement from Milwaukee Mitchell:
- Existing Saturday service to Sarasota/Bradenton is being prolonged from now by means of the top of October. The round-trip route will even be flown on Sundays by means of Sept. 5.
- Southwest’s current every day service to Fort Lauderdale can be prolonged by means of Sept. 6, and two spherical journeys can be flown each Saturday by means of Oct. 30.
- Recently introduced Destin – Fort Walton Beach (VPS) service is being prolonged, flying spherical journeys each Saturday from June 12 by means of Sept. 4.
“Southwest’s continued growth from Milwaukee to Florida, together with these new flights to Miami, gives extra flights to extra leisure locations than ever earlier than,” stated Brian Dranzik, airport director in Milwaukee, within the assertion.
Dranzik has continued to emphasise that to ensure that Milwaukee’s airport to maintain the brand new service that has just lately been introduced, of us want to make use of it. Milwaukee’s airport faces powerful competitors from airports in Chicago.
“We are persevering with to win this new service as a result of Wisconsin vacationers are selecting our hometown airport,” Dranzik stated in an announcement. “The extra we proceed to try this, the extra service we are going to get because the air journey trade emerges from the pandemic.”
In addition to Southwest and American, Spirit Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Sun Country Airlines and United Airlines have all both introduced new service or expanded current service from Milwaukee.
JetBlue’s service begins in 2022. The others have already expanded/added routes this yr or will start flying the routes in coming weeks.
A brand new document for post-pandemic journey
Americans set a document for pandemic-era air journey over the Mother’s Day vacation weekend.
The Transportation Security Administration stated that barely greater than 1.7 million folks had been screened at airport checkpoints on Sunday, the very best quantity since March 2020, when journey was collapsing due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Sunday’s mark was about 4,500 greater than the earlier document, set simply two days earlier, as widespread COVID-19 vaccinations carry folks again to airports and airplanes.
Despite the uptick in journey, it’s nonetheless not close to what it’s earlier than COVID-19.
Sunday’s TSA rely was down 29% from the comparable Sunday two years in the past, in keeping with the TSA.
Air journey has been rising slowly for greater than a yr since hitting backside in mid-April 2020. The numbers had leveled off just lately, however with the busy weekend, the 7-day shifting common of U.S. air vacationers surpassed the interval across the Easter vacation and additionally set a pandemic-era excessive.
Airlines say the general public on flights now are leisure vacationers going to locations inside the United States.
International journey nonetheless faces a variety of COVID-related restrictions. For instance, worldwide vacationers getting into the U.S. are required to point out proof of a damaging check for COVID-19 earlier than they’re allowed to enter the nation.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Contact Joe Taschler at (414) 224-2554 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at @JoeTaschler or Facebook at facebook.com/joe.taschler.1.
