Friday, December 02, 2011Southwest Goes To Nassau

NATARIO McKENZIEAirline Assessing Nassau Expansion

It appears likely that Southwest Airlines will expand its service to the Bahamas, Nassau Airport Development Company (NAD) officials telling Tribune Business discussions with the airline have already taken place.

Vernice Walkine, NAD's vice-president of marketing and communications said: "We met with Southwest. Southwest recently acquired AirTran.

"AirTran already serves Nassau, and as such we wanted to meet with Southwest to pursue the opportunity for expanded services into Nassau, given that AirTran now flies from Atlanta and Baltimore.

"We wanted see what the potential was for connecting service from Southwest on to AirTran flights into Nassau. We reviewed that with them, and we believe that is very well likely to happen because they are looking at integrating their network at Southwest with AirTran, so I think it will work to our benefit." Southwest purchased AirTran Airways back in May 2011 for $1.42 billion.

Ms Walkine said a number of initiatives are in play to attractadditional airlift to Nassau.

She said: "What's most important is that we have determined that the most effective way to address new route development here in Nassau is to work with our partners at the Ministry of Tourism and Nassau Paradise Island Promotion Board in order to put to forth joint presentations to carriers we are interested in pursuing, with respect to lift out of new markets or additional lift out of existing markets.

"That's the approach we have taken, and the first time we did it was very successful with COPA. We did it again with JetBlue, with their Westchester County service out of White Plains New York. We made a joint approach to United Continental, we have also met with Southwest to have them look at some new routes for us, and we are optimistic we will have further success with those particular carriers out of some new routes.

"Delta has indicated that they are returning to LaGuardia in New York with daily service starting March 2.

"There are a few other initiatives we are pursuing. We are fairly optimistic we will have some other announcements very soon."

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