ABQ to lose 11 Southwest Airlines flights - Albuquerque Business First

See correction at end of article.
Albuquerque will lose 11 Southwest Airlines flights a day beginning in November as a result of schedule changes, Southwest said Monday.
The number of flights in and out of the Albuquerque International Sunport will decrease to 34 in November from 45 today, Southwest said.
The airline said it is not dropping any of its regular destinations to and from the Sunport.
According to information provided by Southwest, between May and November, the airline will cut one flight to Baltimore, three flights to Dallas, two flights to Phoenix, two flights to Seattle, two flights to Las Vegas, and one to San Diego. When those flights end, there will be no direct Southwest flights between Albuquerque and Seattle.
Sunport spokesman Daniel Jiron said six of those lost flights are seasonal and five are long-term reductions. He added that the reductions were not as great as had been expected.
“A lot of people were expecting worse. We do see a reduction in frequency but no destination losses,” Jiron said. “Recently we have landed two airlines – Jet Blue and Alaska Airlines” and the airport is always looking to line up more airlines.
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Flat fleet and 50 "new" destinations over the next year or so means shuffling the deck.

 

No surprise here. Wright Amendment restrictions go away on 13 Oct at Dallas Love (DAL). ABQ was one of the gateway cites to DAL.

What's the Wright Amendment?

 

Likely had something to do with higher airport fees than the market would bear. ABQ could charge it when SWA was hostage to the Wright Amendment. Now that through traffic doesn't support ABQ O&D, something had to fall. It was either the airport fees or the number of flights. I'd guess ABQ wasn't interested in less $ per pax.

 

ABQ has been quite concerned about this. We knew it was coming, just didn't know how bad it was going to be. The city has been doing what it could to sweeten the deal for Southwest to keep as many flights as possible. Southwest has been approximately 50-60% of the traffic at the Sunport.