Southwest, airport’s busiest carrier, sees record year ahead
The airline that nearly three decades ago disrupted and then rose to dominance at Orlando International Airport, Southwest, had seemed during the past few years about to be eclipsed by a merger of two discount carriers, JetBlue and Spirit.
With that merger now increasingly in doubt, Southwest will remain not only Orlando’s busiest among 38 airlines, it is also about to power through a growth spurt this spring to reach its highest volumes since first landing in the city 27 years ago and is revamping routes this summer to make Orlando its Florida hub for international flights.
In staying atop the leader board, Southwest continues to symbolize the character of the nation’s 9th busiest airport, Orlando International: a collection of scrappy, budget upstarts including Allegiant later this year and several flag carriers of other nations, and not a hub of the big three, American, Delta and United, with their global reach, premium classes and buttondown tone.
“We are going to see 25 percent growth this March year over year,” promised Andrew Watterson, the airline’s chief operating officer, who met with the Orlando Sentinel recently at Southwest’s newly and significantly expanded ticket lobby for a question-and-answer session.
When Southwest began service to Orlando, the low-cost carrier already had been described by industry observers as the Walmart of commercial flights, bestowing on its expansion cities what the U.S.
Department of Transportation dubbed the “Southwest effect” that sent fares plunging.
Orlando airport officials were nervous about hosting the newcomer, not wanting to irritate the big legacy carriers that airports traditionally viewed as key to growth. And, they were wary of the sustainability of Southwest’s unorthodoxies, including funneling passengers into planes without seat assignments.
It turned out that Central Florida’s burgeoning tourism market and Southwest’s democratization of travel matched well.
Along with lower fares, Southwest was opening routes to smaller markets. That brought Orlando an onslaught of passengers unfamiliar with the routines of flying, swarms of children and a lot of baggage. Those elements still figure prominently in the airport’s personality.
Today, the airline monopolizes Airside 2, a remote hub – one of four in the A-B terminal complex – at the airport’s northeast corner. In the coming month, a third or more of the airport’s 1,000plus daily takeoffs and landings will be a Southwest 737.
Southwest is the biggest financial contributor to Orlando International Airport, which covers the bulk of its $700 million in annual costs with usage and rental fees.
For the 2022 fiscal year, Southwest contributed $45 million, followed by $41 million from Enterprise rental car company, $38 million from Avis, $29 million from Spirit, $29 million from Delta and $24 million from JetBlue.
Last year, Southwest carried 11.2 million of the airport’s 57.7 million travelers. That total volume nearly exactly matches that of the Las Vegas airport, which is similar to Orlando’s in handling a high percentage of tourists and is even more dominated by Southwest than Orlando.
In Orlando last year, Spirit had 9.8 million and JetBlue had 5.5 million passengers, showing the potential for a combined airline to become Orlando’s busiest. But last month, a federal judge ruled against their merger. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said travelers “would have faced higher fares and fewer choices.”
In March, Southwest will expand to as many as 145 weekday departures, up 28 over a year ago, and to 180 Saturday departures, up 11 over a year ago. Those increases will set the airline’s record high for activity at Orlando International Airport.
Here are edited highlights of Watterson’s answers.
Orlando Sentinel: Explain the growth.
Watterson: We had a big order with Boeing in early 2021 and that’s allowed us to have fast growth in 2022 and 23, coming out of COVID
and the recession. Historically, Orlando and Vegas have been opportune places to grow post-recessions. We have gates in Orlando to add more flights, but we didn’t have enough baggage handling capacity. We had to work through how we could attack this bottleneck of baggage so that we could add more flights in 2024.
Orlando Sentinel: You and your staff outlined that Southwest dove into the airport’s guts to upgrade and diversify baggage equipment, set up a centralized bag drop downstairs for cruise passengers and launched a major expansion of the ticket lobby.
Watterson: Orlando and Vegas are the places where we process thousands and thousands of bags. Orlando and Vegas are the two places that we need the most throughput and processing capabilities for bag handling – more than Dallas, more
than Chicago, more than Denver, more than Baltimore.
Orlando Sentinel: Staff also said Southwest in Orlando handled 5 million checked bags last year and this spring break – the airport’s busiest season — will process 110,000 bags a week.
Watterson: You have to keep it moving fast. If the transactions are not fast, then lines explode. We don’t charge for bags. Customers love it. But it also keeps transaction times low so we can move people through fast.
Orlando Sentinel: Does Orlando’s busiest airline want to relocate to the airport’s elegant, $3 billionplus Terminal C?
Watterson: Our operation is too large to fit in Terminal C. It’s a fine terminal. It’s the airport authority’s job to play a kind of Tetris to see what airline fits in what
terminal. They are working through that and we have full confidence in them.
Orlando Sentinel: Has Southwest solved its vulnerability to mass cancellations and delays?
Watterson: We had a big disruption in the winter of 2022. We spent all of 23 working on improving our headcount and our infrastructure equipment. So far this winter, we’ve done phenomenally well. We’ve had a bunch of storms. So, it feels like a big giant check mark on that.
Orlando Sentinel: Boeing regularly makes news for troubles with its 737 jetliner, which Southwest flies exclusively.
Watterson: We had enough interest in this that we established teams at Boeing’s factory. Other airlines have announced they’re going to do that as well. That allows us to have higher scrutiny on the manufacturer. Our mechanics quality check the aircraft and production processes at 80 points from the wings assembly all the way to the exits. We have a good system in Seattle to make sure our aircraft have good quality control in the production process.
Orlando Sentinel: Tourism has propelled the rise of Orlando’s airport to rank among the nation’s busiest. Do you see a trend in the portion of your passengers who are locals?
Watterson: A little bit less than a third of our customers are beginning their journey here in Orlando. That’s gone up over time so Orlando is no longer just a destination for us. It’s heading toward being like Tampa, which probably is in the low 40 percent of passengers originating there. Orlando is still a bigger market overall.
Orlando Sentinel: Because 93 percent of passengers at Orlando’s airport begin or end their travels there, the airport has an outsized share of bag handling, TSA security lines, rental cars and parking hassles. But it appears Southwest is making Orlando’s airport a place to also catch connecting flights – to the Caribbean and Latin America.
Watterson: We used to have Fort Lauderdale as our international gateway and in June we are moving it to Orlando. We have a big local customer base here. And it will provide connections to keep the aircraft full even in lower seasons.
Orlando Sentinel:
Comment on declining prospects for a JetBlueSpirit merger and Southwest remaining Orlando’s busiest airline.
Watterson: We have a plan that we are executing and it doesn’t really evolve around them. There’s always going to be competition. So it wasn’t really viewed as a threat for us. It was something they needed to do for their own strategy, but we didn’t feel like it was aimed at us.