Days after Broward-County-based Spirit Airlines, Fort Lauderdale’s market leader announced thirty new destinations from rival Miami International Airport, Southwest has quietly loaded five international routes into its reservation system from Fort Lauderdale.

The newly loaded routes are from Fort Lauderdale to Cancun, Grand Cayman, Montego Bay, Nassau and the Turks & Caicos islands. The services resume this coming winter.

While all five routes are technically resumptions, they haven’t been flown since before Covid. Taking in mind, Southwest’s rapid buildup in Miami a prevailing assumption among airline analysts was that any resumption’s of international service from South Florida would be from Miami. Obviously not.

It should be noted all five of these routes are heavy leisure/ tourist destinations and not your classic visiting family and relatives ones (VFR) that tend to dominate international travel from southern Florida.