Airlines price their flights based on demand with less desirable flights being cheaper.
Most customers like flying during business hours. If you schedule your flight between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. you don't have to get up too early and you get to your destination with time to settle in.
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In addition, since most hotels have an 11 a.m. (or sometimes earlier) checkout but don't let you check in until 3 or 4 p.m., it's not ideal to leave in the evening or arrive in the early morning.
Airlines, of course, try to make their flights as convenient as possible for passengers but airports only have so many prime slots. At most airports, flights may leave as early as 8 a.m. and depart well into the evening.
Red-eye flights from the West Coast, for example, leave in the evening hours and arrive in the early morning, That's a pretty brutal flight for most people's body clocks as sleeping on a plane, even for the people who are good at doing that, is not the same as sleeping in your bed or a hotel room.
Now that Southwest Airlines (LUV) -) has rebuilt its capacity to above pre-pandemic levels, it actually has 15% more seats to fill and achieving that has required the airline to use every available slot at its existing airports.
That means that Southwest has added capacity during hours that may not be customers' top choice as to when to fly. Now, the airline has a unique deal designed to get passengers to book those less-than-convenient flights.
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Southwest has an early morning and late-night deal
Southwest Airlines runs sales all the time, but it's often difficult to see what the deals are. The airline never offers a straight percentage off sale on all flights, Instead, it (like its rivals) offers selective discounts on flights where it needs to fill seats.
In this case, the airline has a more straightforward offer designed to get passengers on planes leaving early or late.
"Don’t snooze on this sale. Save on flights before 8 a.m. or after 7 p.m. One-way as low as $29.," the airline shared on its website.
To get those low fares, people must book by 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on Oct, 19. Since the airline sent an email promoting the sale on the morning of that same day (perhaps late night the previous night for some customers), this is a very limited-time offer.
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The deals also require a 21-day advance purchase and there are blackouts around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's weeks as well as on select other days. Tickets sold through the promotion are also non-refundable.
Southwest makes capacity moves
Southwest CEO Bob Jordan talked about the airline's efforts to improve its flight schedules during his company's second-quarter earnings call.
"As we shared this morning in our release, we are revamping our 2024 flight schedules. While our network is largely restored at this point, it is not optimized, especially for post-pandemic shifts in business travel. Those adjustments to the network will be largely complete by the March 2024 flight schedules," he said.
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Southwest has been challenged by Boeing (BA) -) not delivering planes as scheduled. That's an area where Jordan said the company has made progress as well.
"We told you back in April that we were reflowing our order book to allow for orderly and measured growth, and we're still finalizing the details of that with Boeing, but we remain confident that we will get the 70 deliveries in 2023 that are assumed for our published schedules, and we are working to build a 2024 plan that should be much more stable," he said.
