When Mike Gillock arrived to lead the soon-to-be-established Southwest Airlines operations in 2005, Pittsburgh International Airport was in the early stages of the transition away from a US Airways hub.
For most of its time as a hub, US Airways ruled the airport: Its runways were designed for the airline’s operations, the landside terminal set up for the airline, and about 80% of the 20+ million passengers would arrive at Pittsburgh International Airport and depart without ever spending more than a few hours here.
Pittsburgh International Airport was, even then, very much centered around US Airways. That would change drastically as the airline pulled away, leaving lean years for the Allegheny County Airport Authority and PIT, with only a little over three dozen cities served, much lower than it had in the 1980s and 1990s. Southwest Airlines’ arrival was the harbinger of the airport’s future.
“When I started in that role, the only thing we knew was that the community needed our low fares, they needed easy access to our network and the iconic hospitality that only Southwest can provide,” Gillock recalled.Southwest began with four destinations out of Pittsburgh as it worked to build a low-cost carrier business in what had been a US Airways company town since the days of Allegheny Airlines.
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