Southwest Airlines to Start OC to SFO (Los Angeles, San Jose: purchase, maintenance)

[missionhome]

Just some news
Southwest Airlines will begin five flight per day between Orange County and San Francisco International Airport on May 9, 2009. Currently the route is dominated by United Airlines who flies a mix of large aircraft and regional jets between the two airports. American Airlines flies a few small regional jets between the two airports per day.

Just thought I would post this because I know this is an enormously popular route to go from So Cal to Nor Cal and fares should be a lot more reasonable and affordable. It might save a trip to LAX for a flight at a reasonable cost. Southwest says the flight will be introduced at $69 each way. This is a lot less than United who is usually around $200 dollars roundtrip, often more.

Southwest adding San Francisco-Orange County route - Los Angeles Business from bizjournals:

[Mach50]

I usually fly SouthWest to San Jose...my company gets the 69.00 each way rate locked in.

I did this for a year...every week.

The flights would be packed every Monday and Thurs/Friday...glad to see they are adding another route.

[bhcompy]

jetblue does long beach(quickest dropoff to airplane around here) to SFO for 50$ each way. same fare to oakland. san jose is 39$ each way

i like john wayne better than lax, but long beach is less than 5 minutes from dropoff out front to the airplane. john wayne gets you hung up in security depending on the terminal(my co makes me fly united out of john wayne.. always wait 30+min)

either way though, good news, because it means that the airlines are seeing something we're not, and that is that people are still spending money

[killer2021]

Those prices are actually very fair. Especially compared to driving there. The drive is around 400 miles. If you use the fed government's 50 cent per mile for automotive expense (gas, maintenance, cost of vehicle etc). that comes out to $400 round trip. If you wanted to do a little weekend trip just to see the city you could easily do it. The 21 day advanced purchase does seem a little annoying though but I guess you have to plan ahead.

I had a teacher who would fly in from Tucson (to orange county) teach Monday and Tuesday and then fly back to live where the cost of living was substantially lower. I have heard similar stories about nurses in SF who would work 7 day work weeks (1 week on 1 week off), sleep at the hospital and then fly out to some neighboring state where they lived.

[buckeyenative01]

Good for Southwest, but those two airports (especially SFO) are some of the most expensive to fly in/out of in the country. I'm curious to see how long those $69 one way fares last.