What does Southwest Airlines holiday debacle mean for BWI?

Anyone booking a flight from BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport these days will likely end up on Southwest Airlines, the once-quirky low-cost carrier that elevated the regional airport to a major East Coast hub over the last three decades.

Most involved were probably fine with that. The Dallas-based airline has produced billions of dollars in economic benefits for Maryland, major traffic for the airport and convenience and cost savings for area travelers.

Now that mutually beneficial relationship may feel different, even among the devoted customers.

Analysts, observers and lawmakers say the epic chaos over the Christmas holidays made the airline look less nimble and far less capable than other airlines. They said it may have been spurred by bad weather but was amplified by bad planning and response. The impact was felt disproportionately at airports such as BWI.

“It’s every airport director’s dream to become a hub for a major airline, and there is no question BWI has benefited from Southwest’s presence over the years,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst at Atmosphere Research Group.

“That said, being a hub airport and having a single airline controlling so much of the flight capacity is a double-edged sword for any airport, whether BWI or Atlanta or Dallas,” he said. “The airport’s fortunes are so tied up with that airline.”

Long-term fallout remains to be seen, he and others said. Southwest airline executives have apologized on social media and through media statements for stranding so many passengers and pledged short- and long-term improvements.

But the airline did further damage to itself when executives took too much time to take responsibility and put too much blame on the weather, said Kathleen Day, a lecturer at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School with an interest in crisis communications and corporate responsibility.

Executives should have been early and effusive in their apologies, and should have even been seen on the ground at a hub helping individuals.

“Where was the CEO, the board, anyone?” she said. “They were such an outlier; their phones didn’t even work. If they don’t follow through on improvements, their customers are going to be wary.”

While flights returned to normal for most airlines by last Thursday, Southwest still canceled 58% of its flights nationwide that day, according to the tracking service FlightAware, far more than any other airline. That heavily contributed to cancellation of 28% of flights originating from BWI, the fourth-largest rate around the country.

There isn’t much BWI and other airports can do when airlines fail customers. And the continued dominance of Southwest, now baked into BWI’s schedule, isn’t likely in doubt, Harteveldt says. Southwest has come back from other major disruptions from weather, and has mostly come back from the coronavirus pandemic that temporarily restricted travel.

BWI spokesman Jonathan Dean said the airline is taking problems seriously and the relationship “remains strong.”

Some observers still expect changes, even if they are small. Other airlines once hesitant to expand might add a few more flights, Harteveldt said. If they go well, they may add more.

“That would be great for travelers in Baltimore,” possibly adding new travel times and destinations and lower fares, he said.

Harteveldt and others also say the mess could force other improvements. For example, Harteveldt said, Southwest does not have traditional agreements with other airlines to rebook travelers whose flights are canceled but could reconsider to ensure no one is stranded again. Fares, which are not always the lowest anymore, could drop some.

Dean reiterated the value that Southwest brings to Maryland and travelers, but he said officials are investing in improvements at the airport to improve the experience for travelers. And they are working to boost the number of carriers and destinations. He said three new airlines launched service at BWI this year and several routes were added.

Del. Mark Chang, an Anne Arundel Democrat whose district includes the airport, said travelers may make other choices if they have them. The crisis should create a “teachable moment” for Southwest, he said.

“I think that this is really a time where they can really learn from their losses, from what happened and try to do a lot better in the future,” Chang said.

Del. Kumar Barve, chair of the General Assembly’s environment and transportation committee, added that Southwest has managed to stay a traveler’s choice over the years by doing things like not charging for extras like baggage, even when they were no longer offering the cheapest fares.

Others have been drawn to the airline’s chatty flight attendants, lack of assigned seating and loyalty program.

Some will give the airline a chance, said Barve, whose own flight from Dallas was delayed by three or four hours last Tuesday.

“Those of us who are Southwest fans, and I guess I am a bit of that, I really like their business practices,” he said. “I have to assume they’re going to get their act together.”

He and others said there will be a lot of people watching to make sure they do. No committee meetings or hearings about Southwest have been scheduled, Barve said.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, noted that the U.S. The Department of Transportation is investigating what he called “a debacle of its own making.”

In a statement, Van Hollen said in addition to holding management accountable and compensating passengers, Southwest needs to “restore consumer and public trust and demonstrate to the Maryland Aviation Authority that it has a plan in place to prevent a repeat of this breakdown.”

There remains a lot riding on fixes. There are about three dozen airlines serving BWI, but Southwest controls more than 70% of flights. Southwest had been dominant nearly since it entered the market but cemented the big lead in 2011 when it bought BWI’s number-two airline AirTran Airways.

Analysts say airports typically don’t want more than 50% of flights controlled by one airline.

The state bought the former Friendship International Airport in 1972 and renamed it Baltimore-Washington International Airport a year later in an attempt to lure more passengers from the city 30 miles to its south, according to a timeline provided by BWI. State officials added Thurgood Marshall to the airport name in 2005 to honor the former U.S. Supreme Court justice, who grew up in Baltimore.

In 1993, Southwest chose the underused airport wedged between the larger markets in Philadelphia and Washington as its East Coast gateway airport. It began basing pilots and flight attendants at BWI, and the airline now employs 4,600 in the region.

Southwest grew quickly at BWI by adding flights through its signature city-to-city system. This was different from the traditional hub-and-spoke system of major airlines that funnels passengers through a few airports. While the system may make it easier to add destinations in normal times, it also may have contributed to issues during the storm because airlines and crews, not moved ahead of time, were scattered and stuck.

According to BWI, traffic grew to 27.1 million passengers in 2019, before a pandemic-related drop. That was up from 12.8 million passengers in 1994.

Along the way, state and federal officials aided the Southwest expansion. Maryland lawmakers, for example, approved $48 million for an expansion of the Southwest concourse that opened in 2021 and added five new gates.

Southwest had outgrown the state-of-the-art 510,000-square-foot terminal built for it in 2005 that connected 15 existing gates and Concourse B with 11 new gates in Concourse A. The airline also added international flights in 2014 from BWI, the first for the airline, according to the BWI timeline.

For their part, Southwest officials said in a statement that they were also eager to “return to a state of normalcy.”

But they also acknowledged that the normal may not be enough. In addition to setting up a page for customers to seek refunds and reimbursements for meals, hotel and alternate transportation, the airline said it would work to upgrade its systems.

In a statement to The Baltimore Banner, Southwest officials added that modernizing operations was a priority in a five-year strategic plan from 2021, predating the latest troubles.

The airline plans to “get back to our historic operational reliability and efficiency,” the statement said. And while efforts were underway, “we need to finish that work.”

meredith@thebaltimorebanner.com

kristen.griffith@thebaltimorebanner.com

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