Southwest Airlines
Southwest Airlines is a major airline in the United States. It is headquartered in the Love Field neighborhood of Dallas, Texas. It is the fourth-largest airline in North America when measured by passengers carried, as of 2024. With its all-Boeing 737 fleet, Southwest serves over 100 destinations in 42 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, and ten other countries and territories near the southern United States in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea regions: Aruba, the Bahamas, Belize, the Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Jamaica, and Turks and Caicos Islands. The airline was established on March 9, 1967, by Herb Kelleher and Rollin King as Air Southwest Co. and adopted its current name, Southwest Airlines Co., in 1971, when it began operating as an intrastate airline wholly within the state of Texas, first flying between Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. It began regional interstate service in 1979, expanding nationwide in the following decades.
Key facts
History
Destinations
Southwest uses a point-to-point system combined with a rolling-hub model in its base cities, in contrast to the hub-and-spoke system of other major airlines. As of June 2026, Southwest Airlines flew to over 100 destinations in 43 states, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. This system means that the airline has no real hubs, but rather some airports with more destinations than others.
Interline agreements
Southwest currently has interline agreements with the following airlines:
Air Premia
All Nippon Airways
China Airlines
Condor
EVA Air
Icelandair
Polish Airlines LOT
Philippine Airlines
Singapore Airlines
Turkish Airlines
Its airports
Its main hubs
Airports that list it on their own website
These airports include this airline in the carrier list on their official website.
Other airports in its network
Where we have documented most of its aircraft
A count of our own aircraft profiles, year by year, from the public United States flight records: it reflects what we have documented, not the airport’s total traffic.
Route network according to OpenFlights (open route database). It may not reflect recent schedule changes.
Data from Wikidata (CC0) · summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).
Cite
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This page was last updated on September 26, 2026
APA
Vuelopedia. (2026, September 26). Southwest Airlines. Retrieved October 18, 2026, from https://vuelopedia.org/en/airline/southwest-airlines
MLA
“Southwest Airlines.” Vuelopedia, Fundación Poderia, 26 Sept. 2026, vuelopedia.org/en/airline/southwest-airlines. Accessed 18 Oct. 2026.
Chicago
Vuelopedia. “Southwest Airlines.” Fundación Poderia. Last modified September 26, 2026. https://vuelopedia.org/en/airline/southwest-airlines.
Harvard
Vuelopedia (2026) Southwest Airlines. Available at: https://vuelopedia.org/en/airline/southwest-airlines (Accessed: 18 October 2026).
BibTeX
@misc{vuelopedia_en_airline_southwest_airlines,
author = {{Vuelopedia}},
title = {{Southwest Airlines}},
publisher = {Fundación Poderia},
year = {2026},
date = {2026-09-26},
url = {https://vuelopedia.org/en/airline/southwest-airlines},
howpublished = {\url{https://vuelopedia.org/en/airline/southwest-airlines}},
urldate = {2026-10-18},
note = {Accessed 2026-10-18}
}Wikipedia
{{cite web |url=https://vuelopedia.org/en/airline/southwest-airlines |title=Southwest Airlines |website=Vuelopedia |publisher=Fundación Poderia |date=2026-09-26 |access-date=2026-10-18 |language=en}}Types it operates · 1,266 aircraft · 3 models
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