AirTran/Southwest merger?

Isn't Southwest exclusively 737s?

 

Never thought I'd hear anyone praise AirTran.

 

AirTran has been great to fly, too.
Their newest planes have been too cramped -- I can't imagine how people who aren't 5-8 sit in those seats -- but they're clean, well-run. It'll be interesting to see if there are any hints of AirTran left once the merger is complete.

 

I've never paid to reserve a seat in advance and I'm not about to start now.

 

You have too, any time you pay Delta $389 when you could have paid Southwest $228.

 

WN is all 737-700s. FL has 37-7 and I think the only 17s out there. The 17 is nothing but a newer MD-80 series.

WN has said they'll fly the 17 but I doubt it would last. Though given WNs low load factor it might make sense to boost their RPSM.

 

OK, I get your point. But I refuse to pay an additional fare specially for this.

But for the extra $161 I'm paying Delta I get to circle over Georgia for an hour, which leaves me rested to race through the airport to try to make my connection that leaves four terminals over from where I landed.

 

Well, here then. I had never heard of the airline before I was booked on it to return from a job interview. Smoothest flight I'd had in a while and good service. The American flight I was on recently didn't even serve pretzels unless I got out my credit card. And they wanted money for headsets to listen to music. I travel fairly frequently and AirTran is almost always the cheapest. Southwest almost never beats it. The only problem is AirTran tends to lie about when a flight is late or when a gate might change. But when you're saving $161 by flying Southwest rather than Delta to Atlanta, you're still paying $30-$40 more each way than you often would on AirTran. And after just eight one-way flights, you get a free one-way ticket. If you check the site Southwest has set up about the acquisition, you'll see that the flights to DFW will be lost and reserved seating will be lost. I'd much rather pay $6 to get my window seat on the wing than wait in line with Southwest. I'd at least like a choice. Finally, less competition will NOT lower rates. AirTran is frequently one of the first to start price wars. Southwest was once more of a discount airline, but all that advertising money has to come from somewhere. Bags may fly free, but commercials don't.

 

Interesting. I've flown AirTran only one round-trip and it was the worst flying experience I've ever had. My wife and I were unable to sit anywhere near each other (we'd booked the tickets together and they did seat assignment at the gate) and we were delayed departing for almost an hour because they had to drain fuel from the plane (we were the first flight in the morning and they overfilled it the night before). The most fun part, though, was they had issued more boarding passes than there were seats (five or six seats were double booked), and the agents had to come onto the plane to sort out that mess and it was ugly. We were delayed getting into Atlanta, too, but that's usually not the fault of the airline. On top of all the problems every employee we encountered didn't give a shit about anything.

 

"I flew Air Tran once and will never fly them again" / Rodney Culver

 

Wow. And I thought it was bad when you asked if they still flied to the Everglades.