Southwest’s 650-Mile, 13-Hour ‘Through Flight’: How A Double Diversion Drama Took Passengers On A Tour Of Texas – View from the Wing

Southwest Airlines sells ‘through-flights’ differently than everyone else. If it’s a single flight number, their website doesn’t even show you where you’re connecting unless you click on the flight details. (“Connecting flights” where each one has a different flight number show the city you’ll change planes at.)

Here’s a flight from Austin to Las Vegas that actually stops briefly in Amarillo. At the start of the weekend it’ll have perhaps 40% of passengers from Austin to Amarillo continuing to Vegas, even though Southwest has plenty of non-stops from Austin to Vegas.

When you land at your connecting city you’re asked to stay on the plane while everyone terminating at the connecting point gets off. They verify the passenger count that’s going on to the next city.

And you get a leg up on choice of seats for the next flight! You’re ‘on the plane first’ even before passengers who pretended to need a wheelchair in order to board before the A group.

So presumably there were plenty of people flying from Denver to Dallas on Southwest flight 1450 on Monday, despite the plane’s planned stop in El Paso first. Those passengers made more stops than they’d planned.

After an uneventful journey to El Paso, they took off again and headed for Dallas Love Field. They made it within a few hundred feet of landing at that airport before having to divert to Austin. There was bad weather in North Texas, and Austin actually sees more diverted flights than any other airport in the country.

• Austin is within about 40 minutes’ flying time from Dallas – Fort Worth; Dallas Love Field; Houston Intercontinental; and Houston Hobby (and even closer to other, smaller, airports like San Antonio).
• The airport used to be Bergstrom Air Force Base, closed as part of the BRAC process in 1993. So it is a large facility. It has a 12,250 foot runway (18R/36L) and a 9,000 foot runway (18L/36R). There’s space to accommodate a large number of aircraft.
• It’s served by all of the major carriers, so it’s a logical diversion point for American; Delta; Southwest; United; Alaska; JetBlue; Spirit; Frontier; Hawaiian; and Allegiant.
• Austin has a customs facility, making it functional as a diversion point for international flights from United and American hubs in Dallas and Houston as well as for Air Canada, Aeromexico, British Airways, KLM, Lufthansa, et al.

After re-fueling, our friends on Southwest started their journey back to Dallas but were held over Lubbock – before diverting again to Midland, Texas. Then they were forced to try again.

After departing at 9:21 a.m. Mountain time from Denver, it looks like these passengers finally arrived at Dallas Love Field at 11:46 p.m. Central – 13.5 hours to travel 650 miles. This double diversion was certainly not Southwest’s fault amidst weather, but they could have driven.