Southwest Airways is increasing within the Caribbean, with plans to serve its first new vacation spot in almost half a decade.
The Dallas-based service on Monday introduced it should launch nonstop service to St. Thomas within the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The brand new flights will start in early 2026.
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For Southwest, getting access to the U.S. Virgin Islands is an particularly noteworthy vacation spot. Past a brand new island and territory, it is the airline’s first new vacation spot in a number of years.
The final new pin on the service’s proverbial map got here in late 2021, when it added Syracuse Hancock Worldwide Airport (SYR) in upstate New York in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, when home journey led the way in which.
Latest years have seen Southwest make cutbacks to its route map, together with exiting Syracuse itself.
That is set to alter.
3 new Southwest cities coming quickly
Southwest stated Monday that it plans to announce a complete of three all-new cities — St. Thomas, plus two extra that the service has not but revealed.
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Whereas the remaining two will little doubt be the supply of a lot hypothesis, Southwest additionally didn’t reveal which cities it intends to make use of to serve St. Thomas’ Cyrus E. King Worldwide Airport (STT).
The service instructed TPG it would not wish to tip its hand to rivals earlier than the route goes on sale — which is predicted quickly.
For what it is price, Southwest’s most important East Coast development over the previous two years has targeted on Baltimore/Washington Worldwide Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) and Nashville Worldwide Airport (BNA). We’ll know quickly sufficient whether or not it is a kind of airports, or a unique Southwest base, that will get this new STT nonstop flight.
Southwest’s new St. Thomas flights
Situated within the Caribbean, St. Thomas (and the usVirgin Islands as an entire) makes for a preferred journey vacation spot: the entire heat climate and seashores you’d anticipate in a tropical vacation spot, however with out the necessity to even deliver a passport — that’s, except you propose to take a ship journey to the close by British Virgin Islands, as I did on a 2017 journey.
A number of new, overhauled and rebranded factors properties have opened in recent times, together with a marquee Marriott Bonvoy property within the Westin Seaside Resort and Spa at Frenchman’s Reef.
“We wish to make Southwest Airways the simple and apparent selection each time, and that is one other significant step in our ongoing transformation,” Southwest CEO Bob Jordan stated in a assertion Monday.
A number of main U.S. airways at the moment fly to and from St. Thomas. American Airways has by far the most important presence, in accordance with knowledge from aviation analytics agency Cirium — adopted by Delta Air Traces, Spirit Airways and United Airways.
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