Southwest Adds Flights at Mitchell Airport

Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport. Image from the airport.

Southwest Airlines is adding new daily non-stop flights to Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport.

The airport announced Monday that it would be adding additional flights to nine different cities across the U.S. this year. Southwest currently offers more flights out of Milwaukee than any other, serving 19 destinations across North America. The airline has also extended its flight schedule through Nov. 4.

“As MKE’s largest carrier, it’s great to see that Southwest continues to restore routes that were reduced during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Airport Director Brian Dranzik said in a statement. “These restorations include a mix of business and leisure destinations that see strong travel demand from Milwaukee.”

In May, the airline will add additional daily round trips to Baltimore, Las Vegas and Nashville.

In July, daily non-stop flights between Milwaukee and Kansas City will resume. The Kansas City flight was flown by Southwest for many years, but canceled during the COVID-19 pandemic after air travel nose dived.

The airline will also increase flight frequency to five destinations (Atlanta, Denver, Fort Myers, Orlando, and St. Louis) throughout the summer and fall.

Southwest will also offer temporary spring break service out of Milwaukee with flights to Cancun through April 8, though only on Saturdays, and daily nonstop flights to Sarasota through April 10.

Milwaukee Mitchell said the additional flights being added by Southwest is a sign of the airport’s “bounce back” from the loss in traffic during the pandemic. More than 5 million passengers traveled through Milwaukee Mitchell in 2022. There were approximately 4.5 million passengers in 2021 and just 2.6 million passengers in 2020.

The airport has still not achieved pre-pandemic traffic levels when it hit 6.8 million passengers in 2019.

The airport has, for several years, been trying to convince more local and Wisconsin-based travelers to use Milwaukee Mitchell as opposed to larger airports, like Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. In the Southwest announcement, Dranzik said, “Community support – in the form of using our hometown airport for these and other destinations – is critical to keeping this service and growing our airport in the future.”