Southwest Airways has tapped a small airport serving California wine nation as its latest vacation spot.
The flights to Santa Rosa’s Charles M. Schulz–Sonoma County Airport (STS) in Northern California will start April 7 and are available amid an intensifying turf battle within the Golden State.
Southwest will fly 4 routes from Santa Rosa, together with every day service to each San Diego and Las Vegas. Flights to Burbank will function 5 occasions per week, whereas the Denver service will likely be Saturday solely.
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STS sits about 60 miles north of San Francisco in Sonoma County and subsequent to Napa County — two of California’s best-known wine areas.
Southwest’s arrival will give Santa Rosa three carriers. Alaska Airways, the busiest service at STS, flies eight routes from the airport, whereas American Airways gives two.
Santa Rosa will likely be Southwest’s 14th vacation spot in California, a state Southwest has lengthy loved a robust presence. However the service faces new aggressive pressures there, notably from Alaska Airways’ fast development in San Diego and from carriers attempting to fill the void in Burbank from the impending exit of price range service Avelo.
Competitors at STS revved into excessive gear in April 2021 with the arrival of startup Avelo, which ultimately flew as many as eight routes from STS. That drew a aggressive response from a number of airways within the West, together with from Alaska, at STS.
However Avelo introduced in July that it might abandon its total West Coast operation, prompting a lot of carriers to unveil routes backfilling service that it had provided from quite a few airports – together with STS and the Hollywood Burbank Airport (BUR) close to Los Angeles.
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Now Southwest is choosing up two of the STS routes being left by Avelo: Las Vegas and Burbank. Southwest will compete with Alaska on each routes, in addition to to Alaska’s fast-growing operation in San Diego.
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Southwest referenced the aggressive California aviation market in asserting STS as its latest vacation spot.
“Including Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport to our route map supplies extra entry to California’s famed Wine Nation for our Clients and additional solidifies our yearslong dedication to California,” Andrew Watterson, Southwest’s chief working officer, stated in a assertion.
“Southwest gives, with out regional carriers, extra intra-California service than every other airline. It additionally leads in obtainable seats, every day departures, and proudly carries essentially the most passengers within the Golden State,” Southwest added within the assertion – although excluding regional associates of its rivals dramatically undercounts their market share.
Extra broadly, the addition of STS continues a latest growth spree by Southwest. With the brand new vacation spot, the airline has now introduced 4 new locations in 2025 after not including any in the course of the earlier 4 years. The opposite new cities introduced this yr are Knoxville, Tennessee; St. Thomas in United States Virgin Islands; and the Caribbean island of St. Maarten.
Not less than yet one more seems to be on the best way, with Southwest saying it “intends to moor one other new vacation spot to its route map quickly.”
In the meantime, for Southwest’s new California metropolis, it stays to be seen if – or how – rivals would possibly reply there. Keep tuned …
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