Southwest Airlines to Launch Initial Routes to Miami and Palm Springs

Southwest Airlines is launching new year-round routes later this year to Miami and Palm Springs -- the first time the Dallas-based carrier is flying direct to the popular beach and desert locations. 

In a rare expansion move during a worldwide health pandemic that has devastated airlines, Southwest is expanding in the two markets where it has historically favored other airports in Fort Lauderdale or Ontario, Calif.

“Our service to both of these airports will bring new, relevant options for our core customers,” CEO Gary Kelly told the airline’s employees Thursday in his weekly video message. “Gradually, they’re rediscovering leisure travel across the country as their own situations allow. Adding these specific airports to our route map will bring us access to additional revenue at a critical time.”

Kelly touted the new routes to Miami International Airport and Palm Springs International Airport as making travel “more affordable and attainable.”

“Palm Springs is a great California destination,” he said. “Southwest has long carried more customers to, from, and within the Golden State than any other airline. Just as we serve multiple airports in metro areas across the country, South Florida is ripe for another. Miami will complement, and augment, existing South Florida service we have in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.”

Details will be announced later on when flights will begin at the two locations.

“We’re in an environment where our business challenge is customers,” Kelly said in an interview Thursday. “And so what we need to remedy our business problem is more customers.”

Last week, Kelly told employees that the airline needs “business to double in order to break even” as business and leisure travelers are slow to return to flying. The new destinations give Southwest strategic locations in warmer climates during the late fall and winter months.

“We will win some new customers in those locations even though we will have a relatively small presence,” Kelly said.

Kelly and other airline executives continue to paint a bleak picture for the industry as fall approaches, a season when many expected traffic to be taking off again after the COVID-19 pandemic handed the industry the worst financial crisis in commercial aviation history.

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