It’s been a strange summer, with super low airfares, yet hesitant consumers. But in New England, there is good news since a longstanding tradition has been broken: Southwest Airlines went against its own rules and will begin service from Boston Logan airport on August 16.
The airport, and the industry, have changed, it’s a whole new world….discount carriers are the new normal, and the old legacy carriers are hobbled with debt.
JetBlue announced recently that it leads the pack in Twitter followers. They also began service to Logan a few years ago and are part of the reason that Southwest is coming to Boston too.
Here’s what a Southwest executive told Scott McCarthy of the Wall St. Journal:
Some things in the industry have changed and some things about Southwest Airlines have changed,” says Bob Jordan, executive vice president for strategy and planning. “Twenty years ago the low-fare carrier side of the market was a niche. Today, the airline industry is a low-fare industry.”
In Boston, an issue that’s been keeping people at loggerheads is the expansion of runways at Logan Airport. For many years residents of East Boston, where planes fly right on top of them on their way out over the Atlantic have fought in courts to keep them from building a new runway. Now they are happy that their persistent demands for another study of the environmental effects has been heard .
