Southwest Airlines has announced its expanded schedule for summer 2015, one that will feature up to a whopping 3,800 departures each weekday.
For perspective, the low-cost carrier and subsidiary AirTran Airways combine to operate roughly 3,650 flights per day at their peaks.
"Our June and July schedule is the biggest in our history with as many as 3,800 flights a day," said Southwest's vice president of network planning and performance Andrew Watterson (h/t Terry Maxon of the Dallas Morning News).
"What we're announcing today is an additional investment in many of our long-time communities. We're connecting our customers to what's important to them-more seats at our low fares, our great customer service and policies, and better schedules through nonstop options."
Southwest lead network planner Bill Owen explained how the airline will be able to offer so many flights this summer in a recent blog post:
"We achieve this through a small increase in our scheduled flying fleet, by the lower good-weather summer flying times, and a slight lengthening of our operating day-meaning we'll start the day a little earlier and end it a little later."
Southwest already operates more flights than any other carrier, and that will likely continue as AirTran becomes fully integrated by the start of 2015.
In addition to offering more flights than the competition, Southwest will add service in more than 80 round-trip markets as well as 13 new seasonal weekday markets next summer.
What's more, nonstop service between New Orleans and Oakland will return almost a decade after being eliminated as a result of 2005's Hurricane Katrina.
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