New Route of the Day – Americas (3 April 2022): Southwest between Austin and Tulsa

Southwest now connects Austin in Texas with Tulsa in Oklahoma. The new daily service on the 690-kilometre route between the two airports was introduced on Sunday 3 April and will be flown by the carrier’s 737-800s. Prior to the pandemic the route had been served between May 2018 and May 2019 by Via Airlines with 49-seat ERJ-145s. The route remained unserved for over two years until American began daily service on 2 November 2021 using E175s operated on its behalf by Envoy Air. American now operates the route 6-weekly having dropped the Saturday service. Cirium schedule data also indicates that Allegiant Air operated the route, mostly 2-weekly, between 18 November 2021 and 14 February 2022 with service set to resume on 3 June until 15 August. Southwest thus becomes the third airline to launch this route in just over five months.

Southwest flights at Austin up 50% versus pre-pandemic

This April, Southwest is offering 692 weekly departures from Austin across a network of 46 routes. This compares with 461 weekly departures on 28 routes back in April 2019. Only two routes have been dropped (to Boston and New York EWR) while 20 new non-stop routes have been added. Frequencies on these new routes in April are:

• 13-weekly: Burbank and Chicago ORD
• 12-weekly: Long Beach
• Daily: Cancun, Charleston, Miami, Ontario, Orange County, Raleigh/Durham, Tulsa
• 6-weekly: Amarillo, Columbus, Midland/Odessa, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City
• Weekly: Destin/Ft. Walton Beach, Panama City (Florida), Puerto Vallarta, San Jose Del Cabo

Now offers seven routes from Tulsa; Chicago Midway coming in June

At Tulsa, Southwest now flies non-stop to seven destinations, one more than in April 2019. The new route to Austin joins the airline’s existing services to Dallas DAL, Denver, Houston HOU, Las Vegas, Phoenix PHX and St. Louis. These are all served at least daily. An additional route to Chicago MDW resumes in June after a six-year hiatus, having not been flown since April 2016.