Southwest announces $49 flights to Hawaii from Bay Area. Sacramento: You’re next

Southwest Airlines announced it is launching Hawaii flights from two Bay Area cities - and sent a note to Sacramento travelers to say: Hold on. You’re next.

The airline is offering initial, introductory $49 one-way fares. Those flights were filling fast Monday morning, a review of Southwest’s website showed.

The air carrier on Monday launched a major effort to compete with Alaska and Hawaiian airlines for the Northern California to Hawaii market, announcing daily flights from San Jose and Oakland to two Hawaiian islands, Oahu and Maui.

Southwest will start March 17 with flights from Oakland to Honolulu, followed by Oakland flights to Maui in April. It will launch San Jose to Honolulu flights May 5, and follow with flights to Maui May 26.

Southwest also announced it is launching inter-island flights as well, setting it up to be a major competitor with Hawaiian. The airline said it will announce flights to Kauai soon as well, but did not say which California cities would make that connection.

The airline sent word to Sacramento that its turn is next.

“Sacramento is next up in our Hawaii announcements and we’ll have schedule details out in the next few weeks, with flights starting a few weeks after that,” said Andrew Watterson. “We’re just getting started with our build-out of Hawaii service for California and are focused on getting our service up-and-running soonest with a smaller schedule.”

This story was originally published March 4, 2019 at 8:35 AM.