Southwest Airlines is shifting the bulk of its international operations from Fort Lauderdale to Orlando with plans to add six daily direct flights to the Caribbean and Central America starting in June.
Pending government approval, the new routes from Orlando International Airport are to Cancun, Mexico; Grand Cayman in the Cayman Islands; Nassau in the Bahamas; Providenciales, Turks and Caicos; Punta Cana, Dominican Republic; and San José, Costa Rica.
Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson said it made sense to make Orlando the airline’s “international anchor” in the Southeast because of savings with crew staging and the airport’s connections to other markets.
“We’re shifting the bulk of the international service in Fort Lauderdale to Orlando,” he said during an earnings call last week. “This will offer better connectivity in our domestic network via the nearly 140 daily departures at MCO. We are fully committed to delivering on a plan that enables operational excellence, improves operational efficiency.”
Southwest operates a crew base in Orlando, which played a factor in the airline’s decision to shift operations to the north.
“Work on both sides of the equation … revenue and costs, it made more sense for our international anchor in the Southeast to be Orlando,” Watterson said.
The new international routes will join existing service from Orlando to Aruba and Montego Bay, Jamaica.
In September 2022, the airport opened a new Terminal C, a $2.8 billion project that featured 15 additional gates to increase passenger capacity by 25% or 10 million to 12 million annual passengers.
It wasn’t clear if the new Southwest flights would be using the new terminal, however. Officials at the Orlando International Airport did not respond to a request for comment.
A Southwest spokeswoman would not say how the changes will affect flights at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. The Broward County Aviation Department had no immediate comment.
But the trade publication Travel Weekly reported Southwest will sunset direct routes to the Caribbean out of Fort Lauderdale. It also reported that the airline is ending service from Fort Lauderdale to Havana, Cuba, in June, leaving Tampa as the only gateway to the island nation.
South Florida Sun Sentinel reporter David Lyons contributed to this report.
