Southwest buying AirTran - didn't see THAT comin'!

SCCutler said:
I hear where you are coming from, Felix- but you deal from a perspective which is meaningless to the vast majority of business travelers; for most of us, I prefer the flexibility and convenience that high-frequency point-to-point service gives, because that ultimately delivers the greatest luxury of all - more time with my family.
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Exactly right and this sums up my preference as well.

I sorta miss the 4 flights get one free days, though.
 
SCCutler said:
I think the fare to fly Singapore in F to Singapore is about the cost of a nice used Cessna.
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I fly first to Asia. I have not done it on SQ but have done so on Cathay, AA, and UAL. Cost was far less than a used Cessna, but it was not $89 each way ;)

Typically, with our corporate deal, about $5k

Years ago, early 90's, I was on a biz class BA flight to the UK. Ticket price was $5.5k. On the way home I asked about taking the Concorde back. I was thinking if ti was a few grand I would pay out of pocket to to upgrade. The one way price LHR to JFK, at the counter, was $10k
 
I'm happy to fly SWA if we have to go somewhere via airline. They've lost some of it these days, but their overall company attitude is great. I got to go to SWA HQ one time in an ACE Camp and had a BLAST. It was one of my favorite parts of the camp. Also gotta love their special paint schemes... The Texas one is best, of course. Shamu has also always been fun.

Ryan
 
Awesome news for AAI.
-Delta in for a beating a ATL though.
-AAI pilots likely just got a 40% raise out of thin air.
WN paid 645 M in cash and 645 in stock AAI had 400M in cash on hand
-717 to expensive to break leases on they will stay.
-no DFW flights for now but that will change....positive of that Term E will be SWA by 2014.
 
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Ghery said:
And I use you as an example when friends comment on how much I travel. You make me look like a stay at home. Better you than me. :)
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I have cut down dramatically this year. Not too long ago I was gone two weeks out of every month. This year I have hardly traveled at all. A big chunk of me not traveling was me refusing to do so until the company gave me some guarantees about my employment. That has been sorted out and I will be getting back on the road. But it has been nice to not be at KORD a couple times a month.

Not too many years ago, before all the big layoffs, I knew AA employees around the world especially at the NRT Admiral's club. Amazing how you would see the same people over and over and become friends half a world away. International biz travel is its own world. Those of us who do it live a slightly different life than those that travel mostly domestically for vacation and occasional business. Thankfully there are still air carriers that have not completely forgotten about our needs.
 
ScottM said:
I fly first to Asia. I have not done it on SQ but have done so on Cathay, AA, and UAL. Cost was far less than a used Cessna, but it was not $89 each way ;)

Typically, with our corporate deal, about $5k
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Just for kicks I checked out a first class round trip ticket leaving tomorrow from KDEN to RJAA (Narita). It's [cough] $17,520.
 
By contrast, it's only October and I have already flown one leg (DFW-PSP) on the carriers so far this year, same as last year.
ScottM said:
I have cut down dramatically this year. Not too long ago I was gone two weeks out of every month. This year I have hardly traveled at all. A big chunk of me not traveling was me refusing to do so until the company gave me some guarantees about my employment. That has been sorted out and I will be getting back on the road. But it has been nice to not be at KORD a couple times a month.

Not too many years ago, before all the big layoffs, I knew AA employees around the world especially at the NRT Admiral's club. Amazing how you would see the same people over and over and become friends half a world away. International biz travel is its own world. Those of us who do it live a slightly different life than those that travel mostly domestically for vacation and occasional business. Thankfully there are still air carriers that have not completely forgotten about our needs.
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The rumors of LUV buying AAI have been going on for several months on the financial boards. Example
 
sba55 said:
Hm, odd. SWA doesn't offer anything to a business traveler that would be of value. Seat pitch is worse than UA E+, there's no first class on most (all?) flights so no free upgrades, no transatlantic or transpacific upgrades, no business class, no lie flat seats, no airline alliance to speak of...and it goes on.

And what's all this talk about "no fees". SWA has pretty drastic standby and change fees (I guess they don't call them fees, but that's what it is if you have to pay for the fare difference to a higher fare class if you want to standby) unless you spend a lot of money on fare classes that don't have those fees. As a business traveler, all it takes is 25,000 and often far less miles to achieve basic FF status on most airlines, which pretty much waives all the fees.

For a business traveler or a leisure traveler who takes more than a handful flights a year, SWA and JetBlue is terrible.
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As one who flies over 100 segments a year with WN (by choice as I can fly others), I challenge you to name me another airline that allows me to take my gf on every flight with me at no cost. THAT is what they offer to the biz traveler. I also have the unfortunate opportunity to fly DL and NW, both of which are only slightly better than riding a rented mule. As with all things in life, YMMV.
 
Hmm.

Not so sure I like this. MKE just got SWA last November, which was nice - But there's already a hub for AAI here too. Gee, I wonder what fares are going to do here. :(
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Hmm.

Not so sure I like this. MKE just got SWA last November, which was nice - But there's already a hub for AAI here too. Gee, I wonder what fares are going to do here. :(
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One of the things I appreciate about Southwest - they don't gouge, simply because they could. Even where they have the only service in a pair, they still have fares which are reasonably consistent with distance.

Around here, we're accustomed to being gouged by AA, because of the market dominance that comes with living at their main hub. Round-trip between DFW and CRP (Corpus Christi): $975.00 - 314NM. It was cheaper to fly the Bo.

---

Edit: You do raise a valid concern, but this is one of the things that makes this acquisition likely to gain approval without much trouble - Southwest and AirTran don't have much overlap, and so the effect on competition should not be bad.
 
ScottM said:
I have cut down dramatically this year. Not too long ago I was gone two weeks out of every month. This year I have hardly traveled at all. A big chunk of me not traveling was me refusing to do so until the company gave me some guarantees about my employment. That has been sorted out and I will be getting back on the road. But it has been nice to not be at KORD a couple times a month.

Not too many years ago, before all the big layoffs, I knew AA employees around the world especially at the NRT Admiral's club. Amazing how you would see the same people over and over and become friends half a world away. International biz travel is its own world. Those of us who do it live a slightly different life than those that travel mostly domestically for vacation and occasional business. Thankfully there are still air carriers that have not completely forgotten about our needs.
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Even heavy domestic travel leads to that.

I see many of the same crews on my regular IAD-LAX route & the folks in the various Admiral's Clubs. It's nice to get on board and have a good conversation with the crew. I've met some of the nicest folks who were crew on various airlines.

Case in point: I flew a 48 hour trip to HNL a couple of weeks ago on DL. DL has a non-stop from ATL w/a business class cabin & I was able to secure the upgrade. Had the same cabin crew going both ways. Had a long conversation with one of the FAs on the way back talking about the personal project that took me to HNL, where/how we grew up, and so forth. I know I've seen her work some of the DL transatlantic flights in the past.

As Scott said, another friend.

I'm up to 200,000 qualifying miles on 4 airlines (AA, DL, UA, and B6) already this year. And probably 40K-50K more to go.

As for FL & WN, this will be interesting. I'm a big fan of WN - it'll be an upgrade for the flyers on FL, especially if WN removes the first class seats and increases the seat pitch in back. Southwest has more seat pitch - ergo more comfort - than AirTran.

As for fares, I just got back from a quick trip to Denver (left yesterday, came back this AM) having bought the tickets late Friday. SOuthwest non-stop was $800 RT, United's first class was $850 RT for the last seats on the plane (return was overbooked). I went on United (only to be disappointed that the captain didn't turn on Channel 9...).
 
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wsuffa said:
As for fares, I just got back from a quick trip to Denver (left yesterday, came back this AM) having bought the tickets late Friday. SOuthwest non-stop was $800 RT, United's first class was $850 RT for the last seats on the plane (return was overbooked). I went on United (only to be disappointed that the captain didn't turn on Channel 9...).
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Man, you scored a deal there.

Wonder how much it would be on a city pair not served by either Southwest or (to a lesser extent) Frontier?
 
SCCutler said:
Man, you scored a deal there.

Wonder how much it would be on a city pair not served by either Southwest or (to a lesser extent) Frontier?
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If you call $800 a deal.... :hairraise:

The cheapest coach fare from DCA-MSP purchased 2 day advance has been running as high as $1300 when I last checked. DCA-DTW runs $800-$900. There is only one airline serving the route....

I've been paying anywhere between $250 and $600 RT on a coach fare from Dulles to LAX. DCA-Madrid (ES) was running $800 RT upgradable coach fare via MIA.... and I snagged a trip to Rome/FCO for something in the same range.
 
Bear in mind, Bill, that I live in AA-land, where 800 RT sounds cheap. Like mentioned above, they wanted me to pay over $900 to fly R/T to Corpus - on a regional jet.
 
SCCutler said:
Bear in mind, Bill, that I live in AA-land, .
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I thought you lived in Dallas? Is that not also SW land? After all SW is headquartered there and operates from the much easier to access Love Field.


I was commuting between Chicago and Ft. Worth in the mid-90's. AA had the flights really locked up, flying almost every 45 minutes from early morning to 8pm each night. It was like getting on the bus. But the cost, even with our corporate deal was pretty high. We learned that if you booked a flight to Austin through Dallas and then a 1-way from Dallas to Chicago it was cheaper than booking the round trip. So that is what we did a lot.

You had to do it as two separate flights because AA caught on to the even cheaper ORD-DFW-AUS and return skipping the DFW-AUS/AUS-DFW legs. If you missed any of those flights they killed your whole reservation.
 
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SCCutler said:
Bear in mind, Bill, that I live in AA-land, where 800 RT sounds cheap. Like mentioned above, they wanted me to pay over $900 to fly R/T to Corpus - on a regional jet.
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Price the DC-NY shuttles sometime. When I did it regularly, the fare was $500. The Acela (Amtrak) was often half the cost.... and the same amount of time city-Midtown.

DCA-Boston (400 miles) can run $600 or up. JetBlue from IAD is often 1/3 or less. I can fly my own plane from Manassas to Norwood for the price Delta wants for DCA-BOS.

As for Dallas, as Scott notes, you've also got Southwest. When I lived in Cincinnati... our choices were Delta or 90 minutes in the car to SDF, LEX, or DAY. More than once I drove to one of those cities to take a connecting flight back through CVG... at much lower fare.

ScottM said:
I thought you lived in Dallas? Is that not also SW land? After all SW is headquartered there and operates from the much easier to access Love Field.


I was commuting between Chicago and Ft. Worth in the mid-90's. AA had the flights really locked up, flying almost every 45 minutes from early morning to 8pm each night. It was like getting on the bus. But the cost, even with our corporate deal was pretty high. We learned that if you booked a flight to Austin through Dallas and then a 1-way from Dallas to Chicago it was cheaper than booking the round trip. So that is what we did a lot.

You had to do it as two separate flights because AA caught on to the even cheaper ORD-DFW-AUS and return skipping the DFW-AUS/AUS-DFW legs. If you missed any of those flights they killed your whole reservation.
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2 separate flights is the way to go. Or a back-to-back if you did it with any regularity.
 
wsuffa said:
Price the DC-NY shuttles sometime. When I did it regularly, the fare was $500.
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Ahh, memories. Zipping out the tail of a 727 like DB Cooper. Good times. Back then I think I was paying around $300 for the privilege. This was over 10 yrs ago.
 
flyersfan31 said:
Ahh, memories. Zipping out the tail of a 727 like DB Cooper. Good times. Back then I think I was paying around $300 for the privilege. This was over 10 yrs ago.
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And everyone was out of their seat lining up for the doors... before the plane was on the taxiway.

You remember when they used to push the carts down the aisle with the credit card machines? I do. Long before we had to present boarding pass at security.
 
ScottM said:
I thought you lived in Dallas? Is that not also SW land? After all SW is headquartered there and operates from the much easier to access Love Field.
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All so true.

As you are likely aware, Southwest has been constrained by the "Wright Amendment," which severely restricted Southwest's ability to sell tickets to states beyond New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, then later, adding Missouri and Alabama. You could buy two separate tickets, had to deplane, collect and re-check bags, all that.

Now, you can buy the ticket, but the flight still cannot be non-stop... yet. That all changes in 2014. AA is not too excited about it.
 
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