Why Southwest Has So Many Flights That Leave Before 6 a.m.

We often think airlines passengers will do anything for a deal. That's usually true, but as we learned recently from Southwest Airlines, there are limits. Southwest parked all of its older, less fuel efficient Boeing 737-300s late last year, and while it has been replacing them, the fleet in the first quarter was smaller than a year ago. However, instead of culling its schedule, Southwest has added capacity in early 2018. How? The trick is to fly each airplane longer each day. Usually airlines accomplish this by adding red-eyes, taking an airplane that ordinarily sits overnight and flying it west to east. But Southwest has never flown red-eyes, so it added more early morning and late night departures. On average, each Southwest aircraft flew one more trip per day in March compared to a year earlier. As I wrote in my story, Southwest told investors the new schedule caused two problems. First, unit revenue was weaker than expected, in part, because passengers who bought 5:30 a.