More awesomeness out of ATL thanks to Southwest
 

ya think????

that's DL !

To quote Jim Nabors, er Gomer Pyle
 

Surprise, surprise ...

Come on, mergers are good for the industry. Only in America would the public be so glad to get sc****d with a smile on their face.

paging Clark Howard........dumbass :mad:

Airlines: Mergers allowed: Prices going up

Mobile phones: Merger blocked (AT&T / T-Mobile): Prices going down

AT&T's Next plan is horrible... Un-bundling cost of new phones but still charging the same rates. Net increase for me about $35 per month.

Only making me look for my Next provider.

Oh back on topic...

DL/NW merger was approved.. Creating the largest US airline in history and they couldn't deny the others after that.

Spirit Airlines, Inc. announced today that its board of directors had elected Robert L. (Bob) Fornaro as its newest board member, effective May 2, 2014. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/spi...k=MW_news_stmp Surprised with his payout there wasn't a non-compete.

Warning: Sprint trying to acquire t-mobile.

If you like competition (even vs. Southwest), sign the petition here to support VX @ DAL:

SIGN OUR PETITION to tell Dallas leaders you think there's room for a little healthy competition at Love. www.freelovefield.com

Of course, we conveniently forget that, for the decade from 2000-2010, we really weren't paying the full cost of air travel and the airlines collectively lost billions (except for Southwest). Telecom has not suffered that fate for the most part.

Over the last "M&A Season", we have lost the following carriers at ATL:

- Northwest
- Continental
- Airtran
- US Airways

I've seen little benefit to having Southwest in Atlanta with a few exceptions, such as $99 1-way fares to DEN in the wintertime. But that's mainly just to compete with Frontier. With Frontier having changed their baggage fees, you can't really compare apples to apples to the other carriers into DEN.

Other markets with the removal of Airtran have become absurdly expensive. ATL-DFW RT regularly $400-700.

The European market has also really gone up. I've sometimes been able to find flights to Asia for cheaper then anywhere in Europe ex-ATL.

but 99% of ATL including the AJC, 11alive, WSB, etc etc all thought Southwest coming was a great idea, and fares would be lower. Plus candy and sprinkles would rain from the sky as soon as Southwest came. I remember they even had some dumb Welcome to Atlanta party at the airport. NOW comes what I knew would happen DELTA DOES NOT CONSIDER SOUTHWEST A COMPETITOR LIKE THEY DID AIRTRAN. As such fares will cost as much as if you lived at a small to medium sized airport they only difference is you do not have to connect. I was all for Southwest coming to Atlanta as a third option behind Delta and Airtran. Airtran had business seats, select your seat in advance, etc etc. Southwest is supposedly a budget carrier (though they charge near the same as Delta if not more) ATL-MIA is now north of $250 r/t all the time when it used to be $100-120. Competition of Southwest as a 3rd airline could have only helped, the buy out though only hurt Atlanta.

So I take Southwest for the first time this past week. The MARTA side baggage check in has become a joke under Southwest. I was at the airport at 6pm and the counter was already closed. And this is not the first time. I guess part of Southwest's cuts at the airport.

And when you go to Terminal C, the AirTran customer service counters are permanently closed with a sign asking us to seek out the gate agents for AirTran/WN customer service. At first, I go to my gate agent to ask her if the hour delay for my flight is still the same. She was very cryptic though not rude. She wasn't even that busy with passengers. I asked her why the baggage claim was closed early by MARTA side checkin and she seemed like she could care less that such a service existed and said she didn't even know what their hours were supposed to be.

As an experiment, I went to another Gate Agent , since they are now all supposed to be customer service agents, and asked him a couple of generic service questions I asked the other agent. This guy was more polite, but not a lot more informative.

The FAs on the ATL-PBI WN flight were not that great. But the main FA on the PBI-ATL flight was excellent and even I chuckled at some of the corny jokes though he got carried away by the chuckling old ladies on my flight and kept making them a little too much. I gave him a pass since he was excellent otherwise.

Surprise! Can ya feel the LUV?

Was told it's closed, permanently.

I'm starting to doubt remaining FL livery will be all re-painted in the coming six months. BC seats will be removed, obviously. But major FL outposts may still see this:
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/i...TyT5_wpcBlh6Ky