SWAInflt

The cities are a follows:

BOS
DEN
RSW
HNL
MSP
LGA
EWR
SRQ
PIE
DCA

All connections will take place in MDW. A link to the press release follows:

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050113/dath020_1.html

gregorygrady

The maximum one-way cost for a ticket booked via www.southwest.com is currently $299. Now that I will be able to book FLL-HNL (actually FLL-MDW-HNL) on www.southwest.com, will the price be $299 or under? Or do the ATA codeshare flights have a different pricing structure??

Dan Burgess

I wouldn't expect the $299 cap to apply to Hawaii flights. ATA's one-way walk-up fare is $574 for MDW-HNL flights leaving tomorrow. $299 isn't practical for that route.

When will we actually be able to book code-share flights at either web page? With the agreement starting Feb 4, the clock is ticking.

gregorygrady

Next question: What's the point of having a codeshare from St. Petersburg/Clearwater (or for that matter Sarasota-Bradenton)? PIE is less than 30 mins away from TPA airport and SWA flies to lots of different destinations from TPA, not to mention the fact that SWA already flies 6 non-stop flights a day to and from TPA-MDW. If you were flying from St. Pete's to MDW, you would have to transfer to a SWA flight in MDW. Why not just fly SWA from TPA-MDW and then continue on on SWA from there? Am I missing something? Is the PIE codeshare meant to save Pinellas County residents 20 minutes for their convenience? Would the price for a TPA-MDW-DTW be the same as the price for a PIE-MDW-DTW ticket? What's the point??

gregorygrady

You can start booking 3 days from now (Sunday Jan. 16) it says in the press release....

Tino

I'm seeing walk-up fares for FLL-HNL (via MDW) of $400-600 each way, so I can't imagine that ATA is going to give their product away at a big discount just because you are code-sharing.

Dan Burgess

Perhaps ATA has a contract that requires them to continue serving PIE for an extended period of time.

And it always helps if you read the full text of the press release. I think I'll try that next time.

gregorygrady

I honestly didn't think that you could fly FLL-HNL for $299 each way. I was just wondering how the pricing structure will be handled on www.southwest.com since in 3 days we will be able to book this flight. It will change things dramatically. Will there now be all sorts of constantly changing prices on the SWA reservations page? Or is ATAs pricing structure similar enough to SWAs in that they have fairly consistantly priced fare buckets?

Tino

That was probably a concession to ATA and PIE. If ATA starts reducing service to PIE (due to the new code shares), that airport might as well shut down. It is a grim situation at PIE right now, and they are barely holding their head above water.

vaikinas2

I doubt you'll be able to book just MDW-HNL on www.southwest.com. I could be wrong, but my impression is that the codeshare will only work where you have one flight on ATA and one flight on Southwest with a MDW connection.

cabinpressure

WN originally said they'd codeshare on approximately 9 routes. This press release indicates 11. Maybe St. Petersburg and Sarasota are the 2 extras.

Dan Burgess

You're right. I was just using MDW-HNL as a pricing benchmark. Although we won't be able to book that at southwest.com, we will be able to book DTW-MDW-HNL at Southwest's page. And if MDW-HNL walk-up fares on TZ are currently $500+ each way, it's hard to anticipate that DTW-MDW-HNL on WN/TZ would be less.

BumpMe!

DALLAS (AP) _ Southwest Airlines plans to sell flights to Hawaii
for the first time -- using an agreement it reached with bankrupt
Indianapolis-based A-T-A Airlines.
A Southwest official told The Associated Press that the
code-share agreement means the Dallas-based carrier will sell
tickets on A-T-A flights to other cities that it doesn't serve.
The list includes San Francisco, Denver, Boston and New York's
LaGuardia Airport.
Southwest in December bought assets of A-T-A, including six
gates at Chicago's Midway Airport and the right to strike a
code-sharing deal.
Since A-T-A flies to Hawaii from the West Coast and Southwest
does not, industry officials speculated that Southwest intended all
along to use the A-T-A connection for such flights.

gregorygrady

From the AP:

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/050113/south...flights_2.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Associated Press
Southwest to Begin Serving Hawaii on ATA
Thursday January 13, 6:05 pm ET
By David Koenig, AP Business Writer
Southwest to Begin Serving Hawaii, Other U.S. Destinations on ATA Starting Next Month


DALLAS (AP) -- Southwest Airlines Co. will sell seats on ATA Airlines flights to Hawaii and other U.S. locations starting next month, the Dallas-based carrier said Thursday.
All connections between the two airlines would be made at Chicago's Midway Airport, leaving travel to the islands inconvenient for West Coast customers. Southwest CEO Gary Kelly said his airline would consider adding connecting cities in the West, mentioning Las Vegas as a possibility.
The airlines will start selling seats on each other's flights Sunday under a so-called code-sharing agreement. The code-share flights are to begin Feb. 4.

Besides Honolulu, other ATA destinations that will be linked with some Southwest flights through Chicago are New York's LaGuardia Airport; Newark, N.J.; Boston; Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C.; Ft. Myers, Sarasota and St. Petersburg, Fla.; Minneapolis; Denver; and San Francisco.

Importantly, the deal does not allow use of frequent-flier rewards on the other airline. For example, members of Southwest's Rapid Rewards loyalty program won't be able to use those credits on ATA flights to Honolulu.

Kelly said Southwest had already fielded inquiries about customers eager to cash in their credits for Hawaii travel. However, the airlines feared the Hawaii-bound planes would be filled with nonpaying customers.

The code-share deal was part of Southwest's acquisition of six gates at Midway Airport from ATA, which is under bankruptcy protection.

Kelly said the deal could mean $30 million to $50 million in new revenue for each airline. The deal covers 243 Southwest flights a day in Chicago -- less than 10 percent of its total schedule. The airlines will split the revenue when travelers fly on both carriers, with each keeping the fare from its leg of the trip.

Both airlines have escape clauses from the code-sharing deal if the on-time performance of the other is unsatisfactory, Kelly said.

ATA is a unit of Indianapolis-based ATA Holdings Corp.

Southwest shares fell 29 cents, to $14.98, in trading on the New York Stock Exchange.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bolding mine. I too noticed that nobody from the Western US could get to Hawaii on a codeshare. I'll be eager to find out which of the following cities will join in on codesharing to HI: PHX, LAX, and/or LAS. I'm surprised about Kelly's comment on codesharing to Hawaii from LAS. In a previous article that somebody posted in this forum, it doesn't mention LAS as a city that ATA flies to Hawaii from:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Enter ATA, which flies bigger planes. ATA flies nonstop to Honolulu from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Phoenix and Seattle, and to Maui from Phoenix, San Francisco and Los Angeles. It offers one-stop, direct flights from Chicago. Southwest said it will begin its code-sharing from Chicago, and expand it in the future to Las Vegas, Seattle, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Orlando, Fla.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

But then again, I'm not real familiar with ATAs schedule. Maybe they do actually fly to HI from LAS. BTW, it looks like all the one-stop direct flights from MDW-HNL fly through SFO.

gregorygrady

To answer my own comment, I just checked ATA's current timetable and no, they do not fly from HI to/from anywhere in Hawaii. In fact you have to make a 3 stopper currently, HNL-SFO-IND-LAS since that is the only published HNL-LAS flight on ATA. So I don't know what Kelly was talking about in his above quote. Maybe ATA will be revamping their schedule. Actually it seems like it would be 100% neccessary for ATA to revamp their Hawaii flights in order to better accomodate SWA if they want to do a codeshare. The flights there aren't terrible from the West Coast (they generally leave LAX/SFO/PHX/SEA) at about 10AM or 11AM. That is still pretty early, but not early enough that connections from other cities can't be made.

However the return flights from Hawaii are a different story. Those will definitely have to be revamped before SWA can codeshare with them:

HNL-LAX 1:20PM - 8:33PM
HNL-PHX 3:30PM - 12:28AM
HNL-SEA 9:30PM - 4:50AM

OGG-LAX 3:25PM - 10:25PM
OGG-PHX 3:46PM - 12:18AM

Those flights pretty much all get in too late to be able to connect to a SWA flight to another city. Another thing I found interesting is that ATA only flies PHX-OGG and back twice a week as well as PHX-HNL and back twice a week. The other flights (to/from LAX + SEA) are pretty much everyday. So unless ATA changes the schedule drastically, it looks like most of the Hawaii codeshare flights will go thru LAX, secondly thru SEA, and minimally thru PHX. That is of course during the second phase of codesharing once SWA and ATA get all the codeshare kinks out at MDW.