Southwest Airlines (WN) will abandon its efforts to build a Latin American gateway in Fort Lauderdale (FLL) in June 2024, shifting most flights to Orlando (MCO). As a result Orlando gains new service to San Jose, Costa Rica, Providenciales, Nassau, Punta Cana, Grand Cayman and Cancun all of which will be axed from FLL. Additionally, the Fort Lauderdale-Havana frequencies Southwest were flying will be split between additional flights to Tampa and probably a return of what’s left to the DOT.
The efforts of Southwest to build a Fort Lauderdale gateway began in 2016 but were beset by intense competition from JetBlue and Spirit, an inability to accept foreign currency and an over-reliance on leisure travel. Additionally, the 737MAX debacle and Covid meant WN was never able to reach anything approaching critical mass in market.
Orlando will likely work better for connections as Southwest’s domestic network is much better built-out at MCO. As for FLL, Broward County now has a relatively free international concourse in Terminal 1 to accommodate airlines. Fort Lauderdale, which is the ninth busiest international gateway in the US as of 2021 (placing it several spots ahead of Orlando) has been plagued by limited gate space as well as long customs and passport control lines in Terminal 4’s customs facility, leading multiple airlines to withdraw service from FLL. Broward County rolled the dice and lost in giving Southwest basically an exclusive international concourse while other airlines struggled in T4, but now has an opportunity to reallocate gate and customs services.
From a crew staffing standpoint, the closure of Fort Lauderdale makes sense as well, since it was a “satellite base” of the main Orlando crew base. Closing the satellite base cuts down on expenses and rotation of both aircraft and crew at the main Orlando base.
Meanwhile Spirit Airlines will begin new service from both Orlando and Fort Lauderdale to a new airport in Tulum, Mexico this March. Silver Airways has already announced it will replace Southwest on the Fort Lauderdale-Providenciales (Turks and Caicos) route.