sandam1
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2016
After finalizing our end of April to MCO, I started looking ahead to a September trip. I was surprised (and pretty disappointed) to find that Southwest had eliminated most of the non-stop flights to and from BUF. I decided to e-mail Southwest about this below is the reply that I received:
"I’m sorry to know that you’re disappointed with our recent flight schedule releases with regard to the one-way flights offered between Buffalo and Orlando. I’m happy to have an opportunity to offer some insight in to our decision-making process.
A big contributing factor to our ability (or inability) to achieve a return on invested capital is our flight schedule. Like any business, we have to analyze supply and demand in each market in order to determine sustainable service levels.
In the past few months, very few Customers traveled locally (on a point-to-point basis) between Orlando and Buffalo each day. Since local Passengers generate a large percentage of the revenue for any given flight, operating one-way service between those two cities without the support of enough local Passengers became more of a liability than an asset.
I know that an explanation does not solve the problem of getting you from point A to point B. Please know that we always want to offer the very best service to our Customers, whether it’s in the air, at the airport, or on the web. We know that the feedback we receive from Customers allows us an opportunity to review and improve the overall product we offer, and we appreciate your suggestions. We will be sure and pass them along in our monthly summary, which is distributed to our Senior Leadership."
Personally, I find the logic hard to believe as, whenever I have flown the early morning down and late evening back flights, they have been full or very close to it. But it does appear that they listen (in some ways) to customer feedback so my advice to those of you who are unhappy with the declining number of non-stop Southwest flights from your home airport would be to CONTACT THEM!! If enough people ask for it, maybe they will listen.
"I’m sorry to know that you’re disappointed with our recent flight schedule releases with regard to the one-way flights offered between Buffalo and Orlando. I’m happy to have an opportunity to offer some insight in to our decision-making process.
A big contributing factor to our ability (or inability) to achieve a return on invested capital is our flight schedule. Like any business, we have to analyze supply and demand in each market in order to determine sustainable service levels.
In the past few months, very few Customers traveled locally (on a point-to-point basis) between Orlando and Buffalo each day. Since local Passengers generate a large percentage of the revenue for any given flight, operating one-way service between those two cities without the support of enough local Passengers became more of a liability than an asset.
I know that an explanation does not solve the problem of getting you from point A to point B. Please know that we always want to offer the very best service to our Customers, whether it’s in the air, at the airport, or on the web. We know that the feedback we receive from Customers allows us an opportunity to review and improve the overall product we offer, and we appreciate your suggestions. We will be sure and pass them along in our monthly summary, which is distributed to our Senior Leadership."
Personally, I find the logic hard to believe as, whenever I have flown the early morning down and late evening back flights, they have been full or very close to it. But it does appear that they listen (in some ways) to customer feedback so my advice to those of you who are unhappy with the declining number of non-stop Southwest flights from your home airport would be to CONTACT THEM!! If enough people ask for it, maybe they will listen.