rsteinmetz70112

A friend of mine who is an Airtran captain told me that at the end of the year there would still be around 30 Airtran planes divided about evenly between 717's and 737s. The 717s are going to be taken out of service until they are delivered to Delta by the end of 2015 (3 per month) but the 737s will fly Southwest flights in Airtran colors until their full conversion can be scheduled.

I didn't think to ask about the seats so I've wondered if they would change out the seats or leave them in. I understand changing out the seats can be done pretty quickly, and they probably have some spare Airtran seats from the planes already converted.

tfc3rid

Southwest is no longer a low cast carrier... WN is now a member of the Big 4. I wish in the end, AirTran had bought Midwest Express so maybe they would have not been picked up by WN.

MrMan

AirTran was sold so investors could make their ROI. If bought by Midwest they would be part of Frontier today or in bankruptcy under Republic. In addition your confusing low cost and low fare, two different things

LegalTender

Midwest tried to buy AirTran?

You're operating in an evidence-free zone.

.

knope2001

If AirTran had bought Midwest then Republic and Frontier would not have been in the picture whatsoever. More likely is that AirTran would have been on the ropes financially by spending way too much for Midwest. But of course anything is speculation...no one knows for sure.

rsteinmetz70112

In 2006 Airtran attempted to buy Midwest eventually Republic Holdings acquired the assets. If Airtran had acquired Midwest I believe that would have been the best result. But it didn't happen.

Justin026

I wonder if the deal between Southwest and AirTran had been presented this way, would it have passed political/antitrust muster?

"Southwest has announced the purchase of one-half of the aircraft fleet of AirTran, along with its personnel and ground facilities. The other half, a fleet of 60 Boeing 717s, will be sold to Delta, which is AirTran's biggest competitor. Delta plans to use the newly acquired fleet on a number of routes where AirTran uses the same aircraft today."

Mulling this over as I fly Hobby-Atlanta today -- on a Delta former-AirTran 717. They are maintaining 12F seats, although the in-seat AC power is a nice upgrade.

Take a look at a city like Harrisburg, abandoned by SWA and now with multiple Delta 717 departures.

rtalk25

Harrisburg was never big for AirTran. For whatever reason, AirTran was too timid to compete on MDT-ATL and ABE-ATL directly against Delta and thus only offered Florida point to point type service. Perhaps AirTran didn't want to fly 500+ mile routes to mid-size markets against Delta. In essence, it knew the ATL hub model wouldn't work in smaller markets competing against Delta. Even it's MKE mini hub likely didn't have much for it long term, and it didn't feel it could compete on PHL-MKE against US.

Out of PHL, I never found AirTran's flights to ATL very competitive with low fares. Not like Southwest competitive when Southwest competed on PHL-RDU and sold $49-79 fares. What I noticed was competitive was LGA-MKE-LAX type fares a week before flight.

Granted ATL is longer distance than RDU out of PHL, but the fares at discount should have maybe been 1.5X the fare of PHL-RDU not double. And why it needed a subsidy for ACY-ATL 2x daily, when it could have gone subsidy free perhaps operating 1x daily or 5 flights a week like Frontier is from TTN and ILG.

Out of MDT, It did offer MCO and FLL limited I believe however, and Allegiant and Frontier to an extent have picked up the Orlando flights. Frontier started ABE but left it for TTN.

My guess is if the Southwest acquisition hadn't happened, AirTran would go the ULCC route following Spirit, Allegiant (and now Frontier).

wahooflyer

The failure of AirTran's hostile takeover of Midwest was a good thing considering the timing of it all. The deal fell through in early 2008, just as oil prices were spiking and all the domestic airlines were struggling as a result. AirTran ended up growing organically in MKE in 2009-2010 and got most of the benefits of an MKE hub (some east-west connecting traffic plus good O&D from all of Wisconsin plus northern Illinois) without the costs of an acquisition.

KPOM

Don't blame Southwest. Blame the FAA and Atlanta for letting Delta buy FL's excess capacity at ATL. Southwest was never going to make ATL a focus city. Delta is just too strong there. But an upstart like Spirit might have given it a shot. ATL has no business being the world's busiest airport. It isn't a financial hub, or in the center of the country. The city is too small, as well. Delta just decided to make it its fortress. They could just as easily have done the same in Birmingham (and nearly did).

rtalk25

ATL is pretty central and ideal for a hub. It can capture Florida - Texas, Northeast to Texas, East -Florida, etc. It's closer to the West coast as well than a market like PHL, and it's closer to the heavy populated East than Texas (DFW, IAH) is to these markets.

To a lesser extent, it's worked for CLT's favor in competing over PIT, when US decided to keep CLT but close PIT.

xliioper

ATL is not slot controlled. There is no "capacity" to be bought.

tfc3rid

Well somebody, anybody needs to get in here... The fares this year are about $100+ R/T for every trip than they were last year. DL's hold and Southwest's impact on ATL schedules has been a disaster for travelers out of here.

rsteinmetz70112

Frontier seems to be ramping up service in Atlanta they have recently announced some new routes, they will likely add more as they get more airplanes.

ATL-MCO begins December 12, 5 times weekly, a319
Chicago-O’Hare to Atlanta begins Oct. 2, 2014 Tues/Thurs/Fri/Sun

PeoplExpress has started service as well but only one route.

tfc3rid

That would be nice but Frontier is becoming the next Spirit and losing what made it special...

That's not for me.