Southwest continues New York-Nashville push as Baltimore sees further cuts

Southwest Airlines plans to add additional flights from the New York region to Nashville, Tennessee beginning in Mar-2013 through new service from Newark Liberty International Airport. As a consequence, Baltimore Washington International Airport (BWI) is losing service currently operated by Southwest from Newark. The Newark-BWI cuts follow the elimination of service from New York LaGuardia to BWI in Jan-2013. Once the changes are complete, Southwest's service from the New York metro area to BWI will consist of flights from Islip Long Island MacArthur airport.

Another element of the carrier's planned network tweaks for the Northern Hemisphere spring schedule is the launch of Southwest-branded flights from Branson, Missouri, a small privately-owned airport where Southwest's subsidiary AirTran is the dominant carrier. Southwest's decision in Jan-2012 to retain Branson in the overall combined network of the two carriers was somewhat of a surprise, given Southwest's decision to eliminate several underperforming small markets from AirTran's network.