SanDiego1K

With the demise of Airtran, this forum will close at yearend and will be moved onward to the discontinued programs.

Carol
Community Director

Phoenixtinct

According to SanDiego1K, this forum is to be closed at the end of the year and moved to Closed. That thread is locked and I wonder why. So, I'm starting this one.

I think this decision is misguided. Whereas A+ Rewards doesn't exist anymore, it was folded into Southwest's Rapid Rewards. The rightful place of AirTran A+ Rewards is as a sub-forum there. That's the way all of the forums for non-existent programs due to mergers have been handled so far. There's no reason why this should be handled any different.

nsx

What are the advantages of that approach? Do you see any disadvantages?

saneman

Don't care one way or the other. As fond as I am of AirTran, reality has sunk in. Plus you hardly see anything of note posted here lately. Imagine how dead the forum will be in two months. The archives will still be tere. If we have any AirTran comments next year, we can do so on the WN forum since such comments wlll be extremely rare in the future.

fairviewroad

Using recent mergers as an example, the two "pre-merger" forums are listed as sub-forums under the "new" airline but are closed to posting. The chief advantage to doing this is that old threads/topics are "closer" than if the forums are sent to the Discontinued Programs dustheap. You will find examples of this with the Delta/Northwest merger, the United/Continental merger, and the American/US Airways merger.

I think the difference here is the sense that this was not a merger of equals, but rather a case of Southwest taking over AirTran and thus AirTran ceasing to exist. I know that some people may take a different view of that, and I don't mean to start that argument, just pondering the thought process. If you go into Discontinued Programs, you largely find airlines that simply went out of business. AirTran seems to occupy a space somewhere between "ceased to exist" and "merged with an equal partner."

rsteinmetz70112

The fact is in each of the recent "mergers" there was one dominate carrier and "merger" was used primarily for tax reasons. Southwest/Airtran is a straight up purchase with the money flowing from Southwest to Airtran's former owners.

However for continuity of service and historical reasons I think the sub-forum idea works best. Airtran will cease to exist but so did Northwest and so soon will US Airways.

But in the long run it makes little difference.

Keeping this information close together will allow it to be accessed more easily.

But on the other hand it's not a big deal.

irishguy28

"dominate" is the verb: to dominate; Southwest dominates the merged entity.
"dominant" is the adjective: to be dominant; Southwest is the dominant carrier.


[/pedant]

traveller001

A+ Rewards after Nov 1st is offically dead. Any problems with the transfer of points should be a sticky on the Southwest forum as they'll be handled by Southwest.

All remaining future Airtran flights are booked with Southwest with Southwest policies. Airtran at this point is just a code-share.

With only about 25% of Airtran's aircraft still flying there are far more former Airtran fliers visiting the Southwest forum than there are here.

So close it now with a sticky to Southwest?

rsteinmetz70112

There are still Airtran branded flights flying and there are still potentially Airtran specific issues to be resolved. A code share does not eliminate the issues of
"marketing carrier" vs "operating carrier", however much Southwest would like to ignore them.

buckeyefanflyer

Why is not Air Tran listed under Southwest in the menu as the other airlines that have merged.

Continental listed under United
Northwest listed under Delta
US Airways listed under American