Wanna get away from Bellingham’s rain and cold this winter? Beginning Nov. 7, you can do just that and escape to the sunshine in California or Nevada.
Southwest Airlines on Thursday, June 10, announced that it will begin daily service to and from Bellingham International Airport one week after Halloween and its initial two destinations will be Las Vegas, Nevada, and Oakland, California.
“With this service pattern, customers traveling from nearly 40 airports across the Southwest network will be able to land closer to southern British Columbia, Canada,” said a Southwest release.
According to the airline’s route map, it currently offers nonstop service to 35 destinations from Oakland and 66 from Las Vegas.
Service initially is set to include once-daily flights between Bellingham and Las Vegas and twice-daily flights to and from Oakland, according to the release.
Tickets between Bellingham and those destinations are now available for purchase for as low as $39 one way at southwest.com, according to the release.
The Oakland and Las Vegas destinations are ones that Bellingham already offers through Allegiant Air, but there are advantages to having Southwest also fly to those places, said Sandy Ward, president and CEO of Bellingham Whatcom County Tourism.
While the Allegiant model focuses on getting passengers to one vacation destination and offering hotel/car rental packages, Southwest offers quite a few connecting flights out of Oakland and Las Vegas, including luggage transfers. With its low fares, flights from Bellingham to Oakland to, say, Hawaii becomes another option to driving to Seattle for Hawaii flights, she said.
“We’re thrilled to have Southwest here, it’s such great news,” Ward said.
The timing of Southwest’s announcement comes as the U.S. and Canada work toward lifting pandemic restrictions at the border. If the border begins reopening in the coming weeks, Ward said, that would put Southwest in a good position to market the Bellingham airport to travelers in lower British Columbia for the fall flights.
