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Which would you rather do? Travel back and forth to Queens in jam-packed traffic, or fly out of MacArthur Airport and sip cocktails at a bar in Baltimore or Orlando for a layover en route to the Caribbean?
Southwest Airlines is banking on the latter for its Long Island faithful.
The airline will soon be offering daily roundtrip travel options to St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, beginning Feb. 5, it was just announced.
Currently, Jet Blue offers similar connecting services out of MacArthur.
Southwest tickets to St. Thomas went on sale on Tuesday, the same day the airline began selling assigned seats for future flights, according to prior Greater Long Island reports. Southwest is ending its open seating after more than 50 years.
Instead, there are now four different fare types travelers can choose from, with seat selection tied to the ticket level.
St. Thomas is the first new destination Southwest has added out of MacArthur since 2021.
MacArthur Airport officials made the announcement on Facebook.
Correction: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this article incorrectly stated a direct flight to St. Thomas would be international. That line was removed post-publication. The headline has also been massaged to prevent confusion.
Photo by Owen Lystrup on Unsplash
