Southwest Airlines is flying more ultra-short routes than it has in nearly two decades. According to Cirium Diio schedule data, the carrier will operate 159 daily services under 175 nautical miles in 2026 — its highest number in 18 years — out of a daily total of 3,937 flights that makes it the world's fourth-largest airline by movements this year.
The reason isn't a sudden love of tiny hops. It's connections. Southwest has been building out its connecting network, and these short spokes exist mainly to funnel passengers onto longer flights at its big hubs. The starkest example is the airline's shortest route, Denver to Colorado Springs, just 63 nautical miles (117 km), launched in 2021 and running three times daily. US Department of Transportation data shows 96% of the people on that flight are simply connecting at Denver, Southwest's busiest airport for total connecting traffic.
Nearly half of the 15 shortest routes are new since 2024, including four intrastate pairs. Two launched on March 5, 2026: Nashville to Knoxville (132 nautical miles) and Phoenix to Tucson (96 nautical miles). Early numbers differ — Knoxville flights filled 76.2% of seats in the first three months, while Tucson managed 66.9%. Other recent additions include Orlando to Sarasota (90 nautical miles, from August 2025), Orlando to West Palm Beach, Baltimore to Richmond (2024), Nashville to Louisville (2025), and Chicago Midway to Milwaukee, new for 2026 at just 70 nautical miles. The list also includes several inter-island Hawaii links, such as Honolulu to Kahului with up to eight daily flights.
The veteran of the list is Houston Hobby to Austin, which Southwest has flown since 1977 and which held the shortest-route title until about a decade ago. Its numbers tell a story of decline: 278,000 round-trip passengers in 2025, the lowest figure outside COVID-hit 2020, with only 58% of seats filled. Some 15.6 million passengers have flown the pair since 1990, and 83% of today's traffic connects onward rather than travelling locally — a sign the route may see schedule changes.
Orlando to Sarasota is even more hub-dependent: 92% of its passengers transit at Orlando, compared with fewer than a quarter system-wide, thanks to Orlando's popularity as a tourist and convention destination in its own right.
For travellers, the practical takeaway is that these flights are not really point-to-point options — they're connectors, and they're priced and scheduled that way. If you live in Colorado Springs, Tucson, Knoxville or Sarasota, they add one-stop reachability across Southwest's network from your local airport, which can beat a long drive to a major hub. But if you genuinely want to fly between two close cities, expect thin schedules, weaker load factors and the possibility of cutbacks — as Austin–Houston shows. Checking drive times against these short sectors is usually worthwhile.
