FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Air Tran adding markets?
View Single Post
Old May 24, 2013, 12:50 am
  #5  
Phoenixtinct
 
Join Date: Dec 2011
Location: SOF
Programs: A3 Gold, IHG Platinum, Marriott Silver
Posts: 849
Reasoning

I don't see it necessarily as fleet optimization as some have claimed. They may be adding international routes out of those cities to destinations AirTran already flies to and since Southwest can't handle international bookings yet, they have no choice but to use AirTran instead.

I did read the e-mail and just hated the part about the "good" progress made. This integration has been so slow and painful. They claim their networks are "fully" connected now but that's far from the truth. Yes, more options are available on southwest.com but certainly not all possible combinations. And while you can purchase an all FL itinerary on southwest.com, you cannot do that on airtran.com The reservation needs to contain at least 1 FL segment to be booked there. Very few WN flights are code-shared as FL flights and most of the time, no options are presented on routes and a redirect to southwest.com is provided instead. As a FL gift card holder, that doesn't work for me. They haven't allowed use of those funds on southwest.com, so I still have $160+ to use on flights that are disappearing rapidly. Bottom line, I'm quite unhappy with how this integration has turned out. Can't wait to redeem all my credits and use up my gift card funds and be done with this whole mess. No more Southwest or FLdbaWN. Enough is enough.
Phoenixtinct is offline