SACRAMENTO, Calif. — For the past six years, Laura Friedman’s workweek has begun with a short commute up to Northern California on Southwest Airlines.
“Every Monday morning, I fly to Sacramento,” said Friedman, a Democratic legislator from the Los Angeles area who leads the transportation committee in the state Assembly. “And every Thursday afternoon, I fly back to Southern California. There are usually a whole group of us on those flights.”
This week, while the Southwest meltdown ruined holiday vacations for travelers across the country, Friedman and countless Californians were wondering what the disruptions would mean for the airline that has become the backbone of day-to-day travel in the nation’s most populous state.
Once singularly associated with Texas, Southwest is now an essential bridge across the north-south geographic divide in California, where white-collar workers, college students and families have come to rely on the airline the way New Yorkers depend on Amtrak or the Long Island Rail Road.
Southwest is California’s busiest airline, with some 800 flights scheduled on peak days, many of which ferry residents between Northern and Southern California. Despite mild winter weather, California’s medium-size airports suffered some of the worst cancellation rates in the nation over the past week because Southwest accounts…