Southwest Airlines is set to become the dominant carrier at Santa Barbara Airport Business

When Southwest Airlines enters Santa Barbara next week, it is expected to become the dominant carrier in the local market almost immediately.

A celebration is planned for Monday morning, after the airline’s first Boeing 737 plane thoughtlessly landed in Santa Barbara, bringing the inaugural passenger cargo from Las Vegas.

Southwest’s initial schedule requires five daily non-stop flights – three to Vegas and one to Denver and Oakland.

“Right at the gate, Southwest Airlines – if it completes its flights by as much as 50% – will occupy the dominant position in the Santa Barbara market,” Deanna Zachrisson, business development manager at Santa Barbara Airport, told Noozhawk.

But the other airlines serving Santa Barbara – United, American and Alaska – do not expect to stay in their seats and plan to add capacity and routes starting in May and June, Zachrisson said.

“With Southwest’s current program, they will have about 40 percent of the total number of seats available, a higher share than any other carrier,” Zachrisson said. “However, we expect the other three airlines to add capacity as air travel recovers, so it will be in short supply for a while.

“In order to accommodate this type of capacity, the airport needed to make some changes to the building.”

Southwest does not charge baggage fees, Zachrisson noted, and the airline warned airport officials that its passengers tend to carry “much more” luggage than other airlines, including large and bulky items such as surfboards, clubs. golf, skis and even kayaks. ”

To cope with this increase, the gutter in the terminal’s baggage reclaim area has been expanded to more than double its previous size and a baggage service office for the Southwest has been added.

Other improvements that have been made include new computer equipment and boarding passes and luggage tag readers in the ticket hall and extended capacity on the Gate 5 podium to be able to board the ground boarding area in four flights at the same time.

“In theory, depending on the type of aircraft, we could host eight planes on the ground simultaneously,” Zachrisson said.

As Southwest settles on the market, the other airlines have their own plans, she said:

»United will add a third non-stop daily flight to Denver from May 6. It will also resume its daily service to Los Angeles International Airport, which was suspended a year ago, with a single flight early in the morning.

»The American is scheduled to start non-stop service over the weekend (Saturday and Sunday) to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport starting May 8, probably using Airbus A319 aircraft.

»United also seeks to add services to O’Hare sometime in June,” subject to pilot and aircraft availability “

»Alaska plans to add daily services to San Diego starting June 17th.

Delta Airlines, which suspended operations between Santa Barbara and Salt Lake City in July last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has not announced whether or when flights will resume. Prior to the pandemic, the carrier offered three daily flights between the two cities.

Delta “still says it intends to return,” Zachrisson said, but did not provide details.

Passenger air traffic collapsed in 2020 due to COVID-19, but gradually returned.

Santa Barbara Airport had the best year in history in 2019 – only shy of 1 million passengers – but is projected much less this year, Zachrisson said.

“We are all in unexplored territory – the biggest fall ever, followed by a recovery, we believe will take time, but no one knows for sure,” she said. “Most industry analysts believe that the industry will not return to 2019 levels by 2023.”

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