Unless you travel for business, if you’re a Disney fan, chances are most of your flights end up at MCO (or LAX), and there’s a reason why the long-standing joke of calling MCO the “Mouse’s Corporate Office” still exists: families and groups traveling to Walt Disney World comprise a huge portion of flights.
With passenger traffic at Orlando International Airport down by 97%, companies like Southwest Airlines are scrambling to fill seats inside their airplanes. In a recent article by USA Today, it was revealed that Southwest only filled 6% of its seats in April, a number that isn’t expected to surpass 10% for the month of May.
In an interview with CNBC, Southwest CEO Gary Kelly stated that traffic levels are “next to zero at this point.” He emphasized the need for attractions to reopen and new safety measures to be implemented across airports and inside aircraft.
“They need to have something to be able to do when they get there. So Disney World needs to open back up. Restaurants need to open back up.”
Travelers need to have a substantive reason to travel, plus they need to feel safe. Heightened health and safety protocol, such as wearing face masks, using hand sanitizer, preliminary testing at TSA checkpoints, plexiglass partitions at all service desks, personal protection equipment kits for passengers, and spacing out seating arrangements inside planes all need to be implemented over the next few months in order for airlines to financially recover.
Given the unprecedented rate of trip cancellations, Southwest may be seeing some downsizing if things don’t improve by July. Other airline CEOs like Ed Bastian of Delta claim that financial recovery for airlines may take as long as three years.
Do you use Southwest for your flights to Walt Disney World? When’s your next flight booked for? Let us know in the comments.
Have a Girl Scout trip to WDW scheduled for October. Flights with SW. I haven’t pulled the plug on that trip, but have canceled our family trip in August.
we will be using Southwest for our Disney plans in June if they are open and if people from WNY wont have to do 14day quarantine other wise we will be canceling
We always fly Southwest to MCO. Can’t wait for things to get rolling again, but we are going next week to visit family even with parks closed.
Southwest CEO: Disney World needs to open right now!
*Disney re-opens; people get sick and die*
Southwest CEO: We take no blame for Disney’s actions.
Life is risk. If you can’t handle it, go hide under your covers while the rest of us adults take care of this.
You totally missed my point there
Exactly! I could not agree with you more! We have the freedoms and rights to choose what and where we want to go and do here!
I’m flying in early-to-mid November, but Southwest doesn’t fly out of Colorado Springs, just Denver. Frontier does, but not daily. So I’ll be on American (got a great fare but bought the insurance in case I have to cancel) but I’ve used Southwest before for getting to Santa Ana for DLR visits in the past. If Southwest would have flights to MCO out of my airport that’s just 20 minutes from home, I’d use them more often. November’s trip has no park hopper or party night tickets bought yet, and my DVC room and flight are refundable in case WDW isn’t fully open yet, etc. If Rise of the Resistance and several other things I want to do (Ratatouille, Runaway Railway, and most of my favorites) aren’t open safely by then with good crowd control, I won’t be going. And if it opens right at the time I’m going, and I know far enough in advance, I might not be going since I don’t want to be among throngs of people (healthy or not) who may be descending upon WDW all at once. It’s why I picked a normally-low-crowd time of year when I booked in February (since even under normal conditions I don’t like crowds), but I’m hoping that with all these new circumstances crowds will be low and spread out over various months….and that we’ll still have the good dining experiences, etc., that we expect at Disney.
We were due to fly out from London early this month but was cancelled. We are now due to fly out in mid September! Looks like positive news for WDW, but will be interesting to see what happens with regards to international fights!
My family has a flight booked for Orlando on July 11, 2020. We’re hoping to still be able to take this trip! We have faith that Disneyworld will reopen by then, with all precautions and proper safety measures in place of course :)
Moron!
You know what, Screw you Jack Black. If you are the real Jack Black, and you’re not, just wanna say , nothing personal, loved Jumanji. However, you can’t just call someone a moron for having the Disney Spirit
How about YOU decide how you want to live or in your case subsist locked down with your freedoms taken away!
having the public milling around does not affect just the people out milling around.
You do know that Disney is in deep financial trouble right? Even if they COULD open, I doubt they will for awhile. Universal will be open while Disney stays closed. Watch and see.
If you think $3 billion or so cash on hand is deep financial trouble maybe you want to adopt me?
Flights to wdw in July, but on American. Southwest was 3x as much. Southwest has been crazy with the prices out of Chicago. They are also crazy with prices to other places. I found this to be a problem for a few years now. I haven’t moved it yet, as trying to still figure out what to do with it!
I’m in the same boat. I don’t understand Chicago prices.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who always has this problem!
We always fly Southwest out of St. Louis, and our April runDisney trip got postponed to end of July (replacing Alaskan Cruise not on Disney). We will enjoy our time in the resort even if parks are not open or open on limited basis. I’m sure the CMs will make it even more magical than they already do. I’m scheduled to go at end of September for a conference but sadly don’t anticipate that happening.
Southwest CEO sounds like a greedy scrooge whom doesn’t care about anything other than filling his coffers with gold.
Some of us want to get back to the business of living. Sorry that bothers you!
My next flight is for my wedding in Disney World! It’s in September and we have our flight already too with Southwest!! That’s all we fly!! I’ve been going almost every year since I was 7, I’m now 29 and my fiancé and his family’s first time will be our wedding!! I’m so excited!! We’re doing pictures the morning of our wedding in front of Cinderella’s Castle for an hour before the park opens!! I’m going to try so hard not to cry!! Fingers crossed this is all gone by then!!
I do hope things work out for you. My husband and I will celebrate 30 years this July. Much happiness to you and your fiance. May you live happily ever after with bumps in the road of course.
Trying to go in October we have hotel and parks all taken care of but SWA’s prices are currently absurd! Close to $600 one way per person (which puts a nasty dent in ye olde vacation budget which was already pretty inflated). I want my trip to happen but I also want to enjoy myself and not be worried about whether or not Florida reopened too soon. I guess we’ll see how this works and how the numbers are looking after school starts.
I have a trip in September to Disney and I always fly Southwest to MCO every time I go.
Suppose to get married at Disney in June, and our flights are Southwest. Our flights have been changed 2-3 times now. We’re trying to be hopeful
I just cancelled our Memorial Day flight on southwest because WDW is closed and so is the resort we were going to stay at next to Animal Kingdom. Sucks for people who around the Disney attractions. Looks like we’ll camping for Memorial Day instead.
The top place people fly to Orlando from is Newark airport and southwest has such a minute presence there I literally never heard anyone take it on such a short flight, it’s always more expensive than the major affordable names, I do believe this is a publicity stunt, they are not the preferred airline going to Orlando from here, other airlines have more of a claim to these statements
Who says out of state people will be allowed to even enter Florida for awhile? Even if the parks open, it will probably be for locals for awhile. I can’t imagine letting people from highly infected states reinfect us here in central Florida.
Excuse me if I don’t rush to get tickets and travel to the parks just because the airline wants to make money. I love flying Southwest, I love Disney. I do not love greed and prioritizing money over health and safety. Sit back down dude and pretend to have two brain cells to rub together Gary. Now is not the time to push travel. I want to be able to go every year, not just once and then never again.
We are locals, an hour and half road trip to WDW. Really hate to sound selfish but I can’t wait to go when there is 50% of capacity.
I booked a southwest flight to Disney for October! I really hope we are back to normal by then.
My husband and I booked a flight on SW (points!) for LBD week. Just booked a couple weeks ago but if have to reschedule, it’s no big deal to us!
Our family uses SW Airlines to fly to Orlando. We have a trip planned for late October. I was able to get a good price for traveling to Orlando from Houston. Have not booked return flight since their calendar doesn’t go that far yet. Anxiously waiting to see what the future will be.
My family is flying southwest for a trip to Disney in August. Very much looking forward to this vacation now more than ever!
I will rebook until there is no more airlines or Disney files for bankruptcy…let us decide what risks we want!
We live in Denver and we are scheduled, for now, to fly in to MCO on Southwest July 20 as long as the parks are open. If the parks are open, but SWA doesn’t cooperate, we will actually road trip in. This is the second time we have rescheduled our trip and anything relating to covid is getting really old!
We always use Southwest to travel to Disney. We go once a year. We rescheduled our April trip to mid July. Hoping Disney will reopen so we can still go then.
SW needs to be more concerned about maintaining their fleet. Not buying planes from other countries, taking THEIR word that the plane went through thorough inspection or, what’s worse, having maintenance reports that hadn’t even been translated yet!
I ALWAYS fly Southwest. I had a flight scheduled for May but had to reschedule for June (hoping I don’t have to reschedule again).