Southwest Airlines to focus 2015 domestic growth on Love Field

Half of Southwest Airlines’ growth in 2015 will be out of Dallas Love Field as the Dallas-based carrier takes advantage of the end of restrictions there, its top executives said Monday.

“The expansion out of Love Field is going extremely well,” Southwest chairman and chief executive officer Gary Kelly said. “We thought it would, and indeed it is.”

The Wright amendment, a 1980 law, limited nonstop service out of Love Field to Texas and a handful of other states. But that legislation expired Oct. 13, allowing Southwest and other carriers to fly nonstop to any destination in the United States.

Southwest expanded its Dallas schedule from 118 flights before that date to 140 on Oct. 13 and 149 on Nov. 2. With the Nov. 2 expansion, 49 of the 149 flights go beyond Texas and the other eight Wright amendment states.

Speaking at an investor day hosted by the carrier, chief financial officer Tammy Romo said airline officials had expected to see pent-up demand at the Dallas airport, but the demand is higher than they anticipated.

“Since the Wright amendment repeal on Oct. 13, we’ve had extraordinary high load factors in our new Dallas nonstop markets. They’re running in excess of 90 percent — nine-zero — so they’re almost full,” Romo said.

“These new nonstop markets and Dallas as a whole are running well ahead of our initial expectations. Based on this performance, we expect our new Dallas flying to ramp up quickly relative to the historical ramp-up of development markets,” she said.

Romo said the airline expects to expand its capacity — measured in “available seat miles” flown — by 6 percent in 2015, of which 3 percent will be on Love Field flights.

While the number of flights by early January will go up about 30 percent compared with the pre-Oct. 13 schedule, the average flight length in 2015 will go up 70 percent with the addition of the longer nonstop flights, she said.

In other news, Kelly announced that Southwest has applied for permission to begin flying from Orange County, Calif., to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, on June 7. That will be its ninth non-U.S. destination, following seven added this year and San Jose, Costa Rica, to be added in March.

“We’ve decided to add two more destinations [in 2015] unless we change our mind,” Kelly said. “They’ll also be international. I suppose there could be one more.”

Beyond that, he gave no hint, although he noted that Southwest will be announcing its first international destinations out of Houston Hobby in coming months. An international terminal at that airport is to be finished around October 2015. International flights into or out of Love Field are still not allowed.

Southwest began flying internationally in July when it took over three destinations served by merger partner AirTran Airways. It finished absorbing AirTran's international network of seven non-U.S. cities in early November.

Follow Terry Maxon on Twitter at @tmaxon.