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Southwest Airlines is moving the bulk of its international flights from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Orlando.
Pending government approval, the airline will launch daily service between the Central Florida city and Cancun, Mexico, Grand Cayman in the Cayman Islands, Nassau in the Bahamas, Providenciales in Turks and Caicos, Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic and San José, Costa Rica on June 4, 2024.
Those routes will join existing flights to Montego Bay, Jamaica and Aruba.
Andrew Watterson, the airline’s chief operating officer, said the change would “offer better connectivity in our domestic network via the nearly 140 daily departures at MCO,” in a third-quarter earnings call last week.
The company calls it an international anchor. Southwest, unlike other airlines with main hubs, operates on a “point-to-point” business strategy that allows passengers to travel directly between smaller markets.
Orlando International Airport (MCO) referred USA TODAY’s request for comment to Southwest. Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL) did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Orlando has more northbound Southwest flights and gives the airline easier access to customer bases in the Northeast and Upper Midwest. “The international destinations, even though they loom large in our mind, they actually are modest-sized markets that require a decent amount of connectivity to fill them up,” Watterson said.
Windowless window seats: Here’s how to avoid them.
The airline also has a crew base in Orlando. “So working both sides of the equation … revenue and costs, it made more sense for our international anchor in the Southeast to be Orlando,” he added.
Nathan Diller is a consumer travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Nashville. You can reach him at ndiller@usatoday.com.
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