Southwest Airlines will soon offer daily flights from Portland to Chicago
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Apr. 5—Mainers looking to fly west will now have another daily option when leaving the Portland International Jetport.
Starting June 6, Southwest Airlines will expand its weekend flights to Chicago's Midway International Airport, with once daily flights coming to and from Portland, according to Zachary R. Sundquist, the airport's assistant director.
That expansion will greatly increase Southwest's offerings, with 1,000 seats on westbound flights, Sundquist said Monday morning.
"We continue to see our airline partners add capacity into Portland for the summer," Paul Bradbury, the airport's director, said Monday. "We thank Southwest Airlines for the additional investment in our market and believe this service will be a great addition for Southwest travelers, especially those with westbound connection needs."
That's just the latest addition to the Portland airport's offerings. United Airlines is adding direct flights to six cities in June and upgrading weekend service to Denver in May. Frontier Airlines will offer limited nonstop flights to Tampa from April 13 to May 11. American Airlines is adding nonstop flights to Miami starting in June, while Delta Air Lines is adding daily flights to Minneapolis and St. Paul in May, up from just twice weekly now.
Since 2019, the jetport added a slate of nonstop flights to various destinations, including daily to Boston's Logan International Airport and seasonally to Dallas-Fort Worth and Denver.
The Portland airport is the state's busiest. It saw record traffic in 2019, when more than 2.18 million traveled through there. But that traffic took a big hit in 2020 amid the global pandemic, with passengers traveling through the jetport falling to 792,571, the lowest than at any point in the past 15 years.
