Southwest plans international expansion from Houston
Southwest Airlines plans further international expansion with six new routes from Houston’s Hobby Airport.
The carrier has filed a DOT application to operate flights to San Jose, Costa Rica, Belize City and Cancun, Mexico City, Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas in Mexico.
Flights would start ‘beginning on or around October 15, 2015,’ according to the application.
Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said the new flights would likely follow the opening of a planned five-gate international terminal at Hobby next fall.
Three are new destinations for the Southwest network – San Jose, Costa Rica, Puerto Vallarta, and Belize City, Kelly said.
"We have a fourth new city, but we will announce that next year," he added.
"What we’re doing with our international flights now is we’re looking at cities where the demand is heavily oriented toward to the United States customer," said Kelly.
However for the new flights to Mexico, some work lies ahead before they can be ratified.
US and Mexico authorities recently agreed to relax quotas on the number of carriers permitted to fly on specific routes between the countries but this is not due to come in effect until early 2016.
In the meantime, Southwest has urged authorities to allow it to operate services even though the maximum number of airlines currently permitted on the Mexico City and Cabo San Lucas segments has been reached.
In its application, Southwest highlighted an anomaly in the current protocol.
"In these markets, service by ExpressJet and SkyWest under the United Express brand means that two US carrier designations are being used on behalf of one U.S. airline," it argued.
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