Photo of Long Beach Airport by Heather Lemmon.

Southwest Airlines will be adding two more nonstop flight options from Long Beach Airport this fall as part of a nationwide expansion of services, the airline announced last week.

Responding to demands for more service from Long Beach, Southwest revealed it will operate two additional nonstop flights on weekdays between Long Beach and Sacramento—resulting in four weekday roundtrips between the two cities. The carrier will also add three weekday flights between Long Beach and Las Vegas, complementing its existing weekend service between both cities.

The services will be in operation between September 5 and October 31 of this year.

These slots that Southwest will be using belong to JetBlue, however, they are not being utilized by the carrier and so were subsequently returned to the Long Beach Airport for temporary reallocation, according to LGB spokeswoman Stephanie Montuya-Morisky.

Montuya-Morisky said the airport is notified of unused slots on a monthly basis in accordance with a local law passed in 2004.

“These slots are subsequently made available to other carriers per an established protocol,” Montuya-Morisky said. “Southwest notified the Airport they would like to utilize these available slots during the months of September and October and the slots were subsequently temporarily allocated to Southwest.”

JetBlue previously announced that it was scaling down service, without giving up any slots.

“Under the current slot utilization allocation process, JetBlue may maintain their current allotment of 34 slots, while planning to operate an average of 25 slots,” Montuya-Morisky said. “The unreserved slots may be picked up by other airlines.”

https://staging-live.lbpost.com/news/city-council-set-to-hear-appeal-from-jetblue-over-certain-late-night-flight-fines/

For the full list of extended flight services by Southwest Airlines click here.