Southwest plans LaGuardia flights

Good news, travelers. Southwest Airlinesplans to start flying into New York's LaGuardia.

Right now, the nearest the discount carrier gets to the Apple is MacArthur on Long Island, about 50 miles away from the city.

Southwest says that it has submitted a $7.5 million bid in US Bankruptcy Court to take over the 14 LaGuardia slots held by ATA, which filed for bankruptcy protection in April.

With those 14 slots, Southwest could fly as many as seven daily round-trips.

This move is a bit unusual for Southwest, which generally prefers to fly into secondary airports to save time between flights and avoid higher fees -- the reason why the carrier flies into a suburb of Providence instead of Boston.

So why are they doing it?

"Even in this volatile environment, we have said we must monitor the competitive landscape and take advantage of prudent market opportunities," Gary Kelly, Southwest's chairman and CEO.

In other words, this is partly a nod to the fact that the competitors like JetBlue and Virgin America fly directly into JFK and AirTran into LaGuardia.

Despite the current economic malaise, Southwest, has recently been making other strategic moves, having cut marketing deals with Canada's WestJet in July and with Mexico's Volaris Nov. 10 to book flights north and south of the border starting next year and in 2010, respectively.
(By Paul S. Makishima, Globe staff)