This spring Southwest Airlines will offer nonstop service from Milwaukee to Sarasota, Florida, Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport announced today.
The new flights to Sarasota will be offered on Saturdays from April 17 through May 8 and will be operated with Boeing 737-700 aircraft.
In addition, Southwest Airlines is converting its Saturday-only Milwaukee to Fort Lauderdale service to daily nonstops beginning April 12. The new schedule features nonstop flights to Fort Lauderdale seven days per week, including two nonstops on Saturdays.
Southwest is also increasing flight frequencies on several existing daily nonstop routes from Milwaukee, including Fort Myers, Orlando, Phoenix, and Tampa beginning April 12.
“Florida continues to be the number one destination state for Milwaukee-based travelers, and Southwest is responding to this demand by flying to an additional Florida airport from MKE,” said airport director Brian Dranzik. “The best way to keep this service for the long-term is to book tickets on this route and continue to always fly from MKE, our hometown airport.”
Earlier this week, Spirit Airlines announced that it would enter the Milwaukee market, offering nonstop daily flights from MKE to Orlando, Las Vegas and Los Angeles this summer. The airline will be the only air carrier in Milwaukee serving nonstop flights to Los Angeles.
Spirit will be the eighth passenger airline serving Milwaukee Mitchell’s International Airport. The others are: Air Canada, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Southwest Airlines and United Airlines.
Passenger traffic at Mitchell International fell 61.9% in 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, to 2.6 million passengers, down from nearly 6.9 million passengers in 2019.
