Southwest to add one flight from STL

A day after American Airlines announced it’ll slash 30 more flights from its daily schedule in St. Louis, the region’s second-busiest airline said it’ll pick up at least a smidge of the slack.

Southwest Airlines will begin one daily flight to Fort Myers, Fla., on Nov. 2, part of tweaks to its fall schedule released today. The low-cost carrier is bucking an industry-wide trend toward fewer flights by adding a net of nine new routes this fall.

American now flies one daily non-stop to Fort Myers from Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and spared that route in the cuts announced yesterday. But it has taken an axe to competitive routes here lately, ending service to three cities that Southwest also flies to from here and sharply reducing service to cities like Minneapolis and Newark where other airlines have hub operations with flights to St. Louis.

When the schedule changes announced this week take effect, American will have 115 daily flights at Lambert. Southwest will have 80.