Southwest trims nonstop routes

Carrier frees planes for other destinations.

Southwest Airlines is dropping nearly 20 nonstop routes in January to free up planes for flights with stronger demand, including its new Hawaii routes.

Airlines routinely eliminate flights with weaker-than-expected performance but don’t trumpet the cutbacks as they would the new flights.

Southwest’s flight cuts were part of its latest schedule extension, announced Thursday.

“We are always evaluating our service patterns and performance to ensure that we are offering the right number of seats for the community based on demand from travelers,” Southwest spokesman Dan Landson said in a statement.

Southwest offers daily flights in each direction on all of the routes except New York-Orlando, which is Saturday-only service.

Landson said one-stop service between the cities still will be available.

Southwest previously announced that it was exiting Newark, New Jersey, effective Nov. 3.

Effective Jan. 6, Southwest will eliminate nonstop flights between the following cities

Los Angeles-Cancun, Mexico

Los Angeles-Puerto Vallarta, Mexico Los Angeles-Omaha, Nebraska Los Angeles-Pittsburgh Boston-Atlanta Boston-Kansas City, Missouri Boston-Milwaukee

Dallas Love Field-Oklahoma City Dallas Love Field-Jacksonville, Florida Dallas Love Field-San Francisco Orlando, Florida-Oakland, California Orlando-San Jose, California Orlando-Sacramento, California

Fort Lauderdale, Florida-Jacksonville, Florida New York LaGuardia-Orlando, Florida Columbus, Ohio-Oakland, California Austin, Texas-San Francisco