After announcing in late 2017 that it planned to start flying to Hawaii, Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) revealed in May 2018 that it would fly nonstop to the popular vacation destination from four California cities: Oakland, San Jose, Sacramento, and San Diego. It launched Hawaii service from the first two cities this spring, but was forced to pause its expansion thereafter due to the Boeing 737 MAX grounding. Southwest will launch its first Sacramento-Hawaii nonstop route later this month.
However, until this past week, Southwest Airlines had not formally announced nonstop flights to Hawaii from San Diego. It finally did so on Wednesday, setting the stage for robust competition with incumbents Hawaiian Holdings (NASDAQ: HA) and Alaska Air (NYSE: ALK) in this market.
Southwest Airlines will begin flying from San Diego to Hawaii in April. On April 14, it will launch daily service between San Diego and Kahului. It will follow that up a week later by starting a daily nonstop San Diego-Honolulu roundtrip on April 20.