CHICAGO, April 5, 2012 - The Chicago Department of Aviation (CDA) and the City of Chicago are pleased to learn that AirTran, a wholly owned subsidiary of Southwest Airlines, today received final approval from the U.S. Department of Transportation to provide daily nonstop service from Chicago Midway International Airport to Cancun International Airport. It will be the first service from Midway to Cancun in four years.

"I congratulate AirTran/Southwest on this great news for Chicago," said Mayor Rahm Emanuel. "Last year AirTran/Southwest provided its convenient, low-fare service to nearly 9 million passengers at Midway, and has been a strong corporate partner to the City of Chicago by providing 49,000 local direct and related jobs and $5 billion of annual spending in the Chicago economy."   

Chicago is AirTran/Southwest's largest city in terms of daily departures. The airline is the second-largest carrier in the Chicago region, accounting for 28 percent of all Chicago domestic origin & destination passengers with an average of 220 daily departures at Midway. AirTran/Southwest served 8.9 million passengers at Midway in 2011.

"Chicago Midway is excited and ready to work with AirTran/Southwest to launch this new service, which we expect will be very popular with Midway passengers," said CDA Commissioner Rosemarie S. Andolino. "Already, AirTran/Southwest links Chicago to more than 100 cities in the U.S. with more than 1,600 weekly departures from Midway thanks to its strong connecting passenger traffic into Midway. We are so pleased that AirTran/Southwest can now offer Cancun service from Midway and give passengers even more choices to get away to sunny Mexico."

Midway was named America's fastest-growing airport in 2011 by Airline Network News & Analysis (anna.aero), growing passenger traffic an incredible 7 percent to nearly 19 million passengers and total flight operations by nearly 4 percent to 255,000.