Southwest Airlines Exits O'Hare and Dulles in June 2026

Southwest Airlines is pulling out of Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) and Washington Dulles International Airport (IAD). The carrier announced on 13 March 2026 that its last flights at both airports would operate on 3 June, with no Southwest service to, from or through either airport from 4 June 2026. Chicago and Washington passengers are being moved to the airline's much larger operations at Chicago Midway, Baltimore/Washington International (BWI) and Washington Reagan National (DCA).

Southwest described the decision as part of its ongoing effort to refine its network and said the changes would not materially reduce the number of flights it offers to either city. Affected frontline employees can bid for open positions elsewhere in the network, including at BWI, DCA and Midway.

Five years at O'Hare

Southwest's O'Hare operation was one of the network experiments it launched during the pandemic, when it added a series of new cities to use aircraft and crews left idle by the collapse in demand. Service began on 14 February 2021 from Terminal 5, with 20 daily departures to Baltimore, Dallas Love Field, Denver, Nashville and Phoenix.

O'Hare is the main hub for both United Airlines and American Airlines, and Southwest never built a meaningful position there. Its schedule was cut back sharply in 2024 and again at the end of 2025. Chief executive Bob Jordan said in 2024 that the airline would leave markets that had no path to the financial returns it needed, and O'Hare had been widely expected to fall into that category.

Midway, about 10 miles south-west of downtown Chicago, is a different story. Southwest has flown there for decades and is by far the dominant airline at the airport. It serves more than 80 destinations from Midway, including all 15 markets it was flying from O'Hare at the time of the announcement, so the exit removes an airport choice for Chicago passengers rather than any destination.

Twenty years at Dulles

Dulles is the older of the two stations. Southwest started flying there in October 2006, before it had access to slot-controlled Reagan National. That changed in 2012, and Southwest gained a much larger DCA presence when it acquired slots divested as a condition of the American Airlines and US Airways merger. Once it could serve close-in Reagan National and its large BWI base, Dulles became a marginal operation. By 2026 Southwest was flying only a handful of routes from IAD, chiefly to Denver and Phoenix.

After the exit, Southwest said it would offer up to 271 combined daily departures to 79 nonstop destinations from DCA and BWI.

Options for booked passengers

Customers travelling on or before 3 June were not affected. Those holding reservations to, from or through O'Hare or Dulles on or after 4 June were given two choices:

• Rebook or fly standby within 14 days of the original travel date without paying any fare difference, using a nearby airport. In the Chicago area the alternatives are Midway, Milwaukee Mitchell and Indianapolis. In the Washington area they are Reagan National, BWI, Philadelphia and Richmond.
• Request a full refund for the unused portion of the ticket, including nonrefundable fares, together with any optional fees paid on the cancelled flights.

BWI as the Washington-area base

BWI is Southwest's largest East Coast operation. According to the Maryland governor's office, the airline carried more than 18 million passengers through BWI in fiscal year 2025, with about 230 daily departures to 82 destinations and more than 5,000 employees in the market.

In January 2026 the airport opened its $520 million Concourse A/B Connector and baggage handling project, the largest capital project in BWI's history, with Southwest as its main user. It added 142,000 sq ft of new construction and 78,000 sq ft of renovated space, five modernised gate areas and an in-line baggage screening system that can process nearly 3,500 bags an hour, up from 2,100.

Part of a wider restructuring

The two exits followed earlier withdrawals from Bellingham, Syracuse, Houston Bush Intercontinental and Cozumel. They come as Southwest overhauls its business model under pressure to improve margins, including the introduction of assigned seating and checked bag fees, alongside work on premium products. Cutting small stations at hub airports dominated by rivals allows the airline to concentrate aircraft, gates and staff at airports where it already has scale.

The timing also coincided with a squeeze on capacity at O'Hare. The Federal Aviation Administration had proposed limiting the airport to around 2,800 daily operations during the summer 2026 scheduling season (29 March to 25 October) after United and American filed schedules exceeding 3,000 operations on peak days. Southwest did not cite the proposed cap in its announcement, but its departure frees gates and slots at an airport where the two hub carriers were competing to add flights.

What it means for travellers

For most Southwest customers in Chicago the practical effect is small, because Midway already carried the bulk of the airline's Chicago flying and offers every destination that was served from O'Hare. Passengers who lived near O'Hare or relied on it for connections to other carriers lose that option. In Washington, travellers in northern Virginia who used Dulles will need to travel to DCA or BWI for Southwest flights, although the number of affected routes was small.