Southwest’s latest schedule is out, and guess who is paying attention to Memphis? It’s not technically Southwest yet, but Southwest is using its AirTran subsidiary to add destinations and flights in Memphis. As one airline fades in the land of Elvis, another grows. The circle of life continues.

Back in December, I profiled the remains of Delta’s hub in Memphis which now has fewer than 100 flights daily. At the time, I said the cuts “should open the door even further for someone like Southwest to come in and bring fares down.” And that time has now come. Like a vulture feasting on the carcass of a rotting corpse, Southwest sees opportunity in the remains in Memphis. I don’t doubt that’s the case.

As of this summer, AirTran had scheduled only 4 flights a day between Memphis and Atlanta on 717 aircraft. In other words, it’s great if you want to get to Atlanta and you aren’t time sensitive. Sure, there are some connecting options, but it’s a very minimal presence. That changes on August 11 when AirTran adds 1 daily to Orlando, 1 daily to Baltimore, and 2 daily to Chicago/Midway, all with 717s. This looks a lot like a Southwest schedule, doesn’t it?

That’s why I was a little surprised to see this flown by AirTran, because it fits quite nicely into the Southwest service pattern. But now I get it. First, Southwest and AirTran just started limiting codesharing. It will be up and running soon on the rest of the system. So Southwest can really use AirTran as a trial balloon. Think about it. It can put a smaller airplane (717) into these markets so it has fewer seats to fill. Oh, and it can charge bag fees and change fees as well. So putting AirTran in this market lets Southwest test the waters to see if these routes are going to work out or not.

It would seem likely that they would work. Delta still has up to 3 daily mainline airplanes flying from Memphis to Orlando so that appears to be a good market. And while Delta doesn’t fly to Midway or Baltimore, it does fly to O’Hare and National. Still, the real point is that AirTran can connect people into the Southwest network at both those points anyway.

I would assume that this is just the start of what we’re going to see happen in Memphis. As Delta kills off its presence there more and more, that provides opportunities for others to come in. And while I don’t expect to see Memphis grow to the size of Nashville for Southwest, I imagine this is just the first of several new flights that the airport will see. Southwest doesn’t have a ton of growth opportunities in the US, so this should be a welcome one.

So will this now please all the locals in Memphis who crow about how awful and expensive Delta is? Nah. This gets those people to a few more places, but it’s not going to solve all their problems. It will, however, be very interesting to check in with them in 5 years to see if they’re happier at that point. They might have lower fares on some routes but they’ll have fewer nonstop destinations. We’ve seen this play out in many cities around the US.

By that point, I imagine Delta will have little more than flights to other hubs in the Delta system. But will others have replaced it with enough service to please Memphians? We’ll find out.

[Original Memphis Belle photo via Richard A. McGuirk / Shutterstock.com]

It has been more than 2 years and 4 months since Southwest announced it would purchase AirTran. Since that time, the two airlines have operated as completely separate entities in the eyes of travelers. That is finally changing as the airlines have mercifully begun codesharing, although so far only with a very limited test that the airline isn’t talking about.

As reported by ch-aviation, Southwest has put its code on AirTran flights from Atlanta to both Ft Lauderdale and Ft Myers. AirTran has its code on flights from Atlanta to Louisville and Norfolk. I asked Southwest’s PR team for details and was told that it’s just a test and more information will be forthcoming in mid-February. If all goes well, it will roll out fully by April. Without any official info, I had to dig around to try to piece together the story.

It appears that you can’t buy nonstop flights on the codeshare. It only works on connections. You can, of course, purchase directly through the airlines, but you can also buy AirTran codeshares on Southwest through travel agents online and off. Here’s what it looks like on the Southwest site.

Now, this brings up all kinds of questions, and it’s bound to be confusing to loyalists of either airline. Basic pricing seems to be the same whether you buy from AirTran or Southwest, but there are so many differences in the business model that things get very confusing, very quickly.

Bag Fees
Southwest lets you check two bags for free while AirTran charges like nearly everyone else. So which bag fee applies? It seems that the bag fees of the airline through which you buy the ticket applies. That’s right. You could buy an itinerary on AirTran.com and pay bag fees. But you could buy the exact same itinerary from Southwest.com and pay none. What’s more, you check in with the airline that operates the flight.

Think about that. You might buy from AirTran and show up at the AirTran ticket counter in Ft Lauderdale and pay the bag fee as usual. But then you might buy the same ticket from Southwest. You still show up at the AirTran counter but you won’t be charged a bag fee. The assumption is that the counter agent knows where you bought your ticket, but is that really also going to be the case for skycaps as well? Having just spoken with some AirTran reservations agents (see below), I’m skeptical that this will be enforced properly, at least initially.

The good news here is that your bags will be transferred between airlines. That means we can now say something that I never thought I’d see – Southwest is interlining!

Where You Should Book: Southwest

Seating
As we all know, Southwest doesn’t have assigned seats while AirTran does. And though AirTran assigns seats, the airline charges if you want a seat assigned in advance. So how does this work? Well, it’s a two-step process. For the flight you have on Southwest, you still check in 24 hours in advance as you normally would. You’ll get a boarding card and it’ll work like normal.

But what about the AirTran flight? Well, if you buy on AirTran’s website, then you can just buy a seat assignment for a few bucks as you would today. (There is no charge for Business Class seat assignments.) If you book with Southwest, it simply says you “will be assigned a seat and will have the opportunity to change the seat once you arrive at the airport.” I assume this means that you get a random seat, and it’s unclear to me if you’ll know what it is in advance. If you can find out and you don’t like it? Well, you can’t change until you get to the airport – not even when you check in. That is unfortunate.

Where You Should Book: AirTran

Business Class
AirTran has a Business Class cabin while Southwest is all coach. So how does that work? Well, it sort of works now that Southwest has Business Select.

I couldn’t get answers despite the PR team’s efforts, but the Southwest reservations agent I spoke with said if you buy a Business Select ticket, you get Business Class on AirTran. The fares are the same for Business Select via Southwest and Business Class via AirTran, so that seems like it should be true. And I have to assume that they just cap Business Select at 12 on AirTran flights since there are only 12 Business Class seats instead of 15 as they do on Southwest flights. The agent also said that if you buy Business Class on AirTran, you get Business Select on Southwest.

Wanting to confirm, I called the AirTran reservations line to make sure that was correct. Apparently nobody told the AirTran folks how this all works. The first person told me that if you bought a Business Class ticket on AirTran, you get coach on Southwest. I asked about Business Select or priority boarding and she had no idea. She said it was just a coach seat. Right, but…. So I called back and the second guy said that Southwest and AirTran don’t codeshare. Oh boy. I see where this is going. I gave up.

But it seems to me that the original Southwest agent got it right. The only thing I couldn’t figure out is whether you can change your seat assignments in Business Class on AirTran if you book via Southwest or if it’s like coach where you can’t.

Where You Should Book: Tie (with possible edge to AirTran)

So there you have it; the codesharing has begun. This should allow Southwest to more efficiently schedule aircraft and start mixing the AirTran and Southwest fleets more. (I doubt we’d see AirTran expanding in Memphis without this on the horizon.) But definitely be careful. The business model differences may make things a little more confusing. Hopefully we’ll learn more soon when Southwest starts talking about this.

On the Spot: Tips for holiday travelers – LA Times
A nice write-up that suggest using Cranky Concierge for holiday travels.

Defend yourself against flight delays and cancellations: Cranky Concierge – The Travel Analyst
I met her at Frequent Traveler University and we did a little interview after. Here’s her write-up.

In the Trenches: Business Hours Revisited – Intuit Small Business Blog
Our business hours work well, but we can do a better job of communicating them I think.

Southwest Says It Doesn’t Have Bag and Change Fees, but It Kind of Does – Conde Nast Daily Traveler
Southwest likes to say it has no bag fees, but in reality, it does. And it’s raising them.

Today is Valentine’s Day, so how about a little LUV story? One of the things about Southwest’s takeover of AirTran that I like the most is the transition plan. The way it’s being done is incredibly customer-friendly, and it’s likely to have a very minor impact on travelers, unlike what happens in most mergers. That is probably because the Southwest/AirTran merger is completely unique in how it’s proceeding. In other words, no other mergers could use this plan.

What’s so unique about this merger is that AirTran truly is disappearing. This isn’t a “merger of equals” or anything else like we’ve seen in other big mergers. This is Southwest taking AirTran and turning its assets into Southwest. Because of that, the transition can occur much more easily. Effectively, this is how it will work.

Southwest has already started slowly canceling AirTran flights and re-creating them as Southwest flights. For example, today, AirTran operates three flights between LA and Atlanta while Southwest has none. Flash forward to a Tuesday in September and there are now three daily flights on Southwest as well as one single redeye on AirTran. So Southwest replaces the AirTran flights and has the ability to grow a little as well.

If you fly on an AirTran flight, you’ll get the AirTran onboard product. There will be business class, assigned seats, bag fees, etc. If you fly on a Southwest flight, you get the Southwest product with open seating, all coach, and no bag fees. Over time, all the AirTran flights will disappear and the Southwest flights will be the only ones to remain.

It seems so simple, and really, it is. Southwest has dramatically reduced the number of AirTran flights starting this summer (from 680 daily departures on a Friday all the way down to 568). This will allow the airline to start pulling out airplanes from the AirTran fleet to send them through the car wash where they’ll come out looking exactly like Southwest airplanes inside and out. At the same time, crews will begin coming over from AirTran to Southwest. They’ll get training and will be assimilated into the Southwest operation.

If you’re a cook, it’s like slowly adding an ingredient and mixing as you go instead of just dumping everything in at once. It just makes a lot of sense to do it that.

So why can Southwest do this so effortlessly and the others can’t? Because the other mergers are completely different animals. Whether it was America West/US Airways, Delta/Northwest, or Continental/United, these were all true mergers in the sense that they took bits and pieces from each other to create the new combined airline. Think about the harmonization of the frequent flier program as just one piece of the pie. There isn’t one airline that stays the same in these mergers, but there is in the Southwest/AirTran merger. AirTran is effectively disappearing and will leave barely a trace, and that allows Southwest to gradually phase it out without making any big changes to the surviving operation along the way.

I’m not exaggerating when I say tat AirTran is disappearing. According to Southwest spokesperson Chris Mainz, “we haven’t announced or decided on anything concrete that we plan to pull over from AirTran and incorporate into Southwest.” There will be some things behind the scenes that need to come over. For example, Southwest isn’t capable of flying internationally but AirTran can. That not a customer-facing issue, but it is something Southwest will need to incorporate behind the scenes to allow it to fly internationally. That’s why I imagine that toward the very the end, AirTran will just be a collection of international flights and redeyes, the two things that Southwest doesn’t do today. (Southwest has said that some limited redeyes are likely to come over.)

In the meantime, Southwest and AirTran continue to operate separately with Southwest getting bigger and AirTran getting smaller. There are efforts to connect the two systems with codesharing, but Southwest’s technology team is the hold-up. It can’t codeshare yet, despite years of trying. The plan is to have that up and running sometime in the near future, and that will make it easier to transition AirTran out slowly without completely killing the feed in the Atlanta hub.

Meanwhile, Southwest is doing what it can to relocate AirTran flights to be near Southwest in airports around the US so they can operate together, even as they continue to operate as two separate airlines.

[Original Southwest photo via Flickr user fdenardo1/Original AirTran photo via Flickr user PhillipC/Original Car Wash photo via Flickr user Ralph Hockens/All via CC 2.0]

While I was off, Southwest made a couple of interesting moves worth talking about. By far the most interesting to me was a decision on which AirTran markets stay in the system and which ones disappear. (You can also see full schedule changes for the summer.) Instead of leaking it out in dribs and drabs, a tactic for which I chastised them previously, this time they put a big lump announcement together.

When I wrote about the last route announcement which axed more small cities, I listed 8 AirTran cities which I thought should have been concerned about their future. Looks like I was about half right. Here’s a map with all the cities that won’t make the cut.

The Losers
The ones that will be going are Allentown (PA), Harrisburg (PA), Huntsville (AL), Lexington (KY), Sarasota (FL), and Westchester County (NY). The first four were on my list, and I had no doubt at all about Huntsville and Lexington. Allentown and Harrisburg were a mild surprise: I thought one would stick around, especially since Southwest has been getting its clock cleaned in Philly. I figured one of those cities might be a good add to the network, but I didn’t expect to see both. But it’s the last two cities that caught my eye.

Sarasota and Westchester were bigger surprises. Sarasota is a highly seasonal market, so maybe Southwest couldn’t find a way to properly serve it year-round, but I imagine it’s a good market in the winter. It is just 50 miles south of Tampa, so I suppose Southwest can leave it to airlines that are better capable of serving the market.

In Westchester, AirTran only has five flights a day there with two to Atlanta, one to Orlando, and one on the blue hair express down to West Palm Beach. Southwest wouldn’t be able to get more slots there, so it would be tough to run a Southwest-style operation. The model is further challenged by the fact that the airport handles all customer service, so Southwest couldn’t have its own people. (Southwest says that’s not why the airline backed out, but it had to be a factor.) Other airlines will be more than happy to snap up those slots in what is a strong market serving a very rich clientele.

The Winners
But what about the cities that are staying? That’s an interesting story. I said Branson (MO), Pensacola (FL), Portland (ME), and Rochester (NY) should be concerned, but they made the cut. I shouldn’t have been surprised by Branson since Southwest already announced AirTran would start Baltimore flights from there. I’m sure Southwest is getting a hefty subsidy, clearly showing this isn’t your father’s Southwest that only flew to markets that worked on their own. (The same goes for Wichita, which will be keeping service thanks to continuing what appears to be a perpetual subsidy.)

Pensacola surprised me because when it started Panama City service, Southwest agreed to pay a penalty if it started to serve Pensacola because of its proximity. Could the market be so good that it’s worth paying the penalty? Or maybe Southwest renegotiated that deal?

What else is staying? Well, there are the obvious ones. Akron-Canton (OH), Des Moines, Washington/National, and most of the international cities are sticking around. Southwest has already made it clear that these would be staying through various previous route announcements.

Then there are the mid-size cities that Southwest has previously avoided. Charlotte and Memphis are the most notable here. Southwest should serve these cities, though I don’t expect an enormous operation at either, at least not at this point.

That leaves us with Flint (MI), Dayton (OH), Richmond (VA), Key West (FL), and Grand Rapids (MI). These are a mixed bag. Dayton seems to be the closest Southwest wants to get to Cincinnati for now. Grand Rapids and Richmond are decent-sized places that might generate enough demand for a small operation. Flint and Key West are head-scratchers, however.

Flint isn’t very far from Detroit and it’s not exactly an economic powerhouse. Seems like a stretch to me. And Key West . . . if Sarasota can’t survive then I’m surprised Key West can. These just seem like markets that can barely sustain a minimum level of Southwest service, at best.

EVOLVE Seating
And that leads us back to the other big issue recently . . . Southwest and its seating. Last week, Southwest made a big deal about how it was putting new seating into its airplanes. It hailed the change as a “new era of customer comfort and sustainability.” There’s even a name for this change – EVOLVE – and yes, it’s written in all-caps. Give me a break.

I haven’t had the chance to try these seats, but they are thinner, and they use more environmentally-friendly material. They will, however, also recline less than the existing seats, and they’ll be moved closer together – enough to allow another row to be added to the airplanes. I have to reserve judgment on these since I haven’t sat in them to see if they truly are comfortable or not, but the way that Southwest is promoting this as the greatest thing since slice bread certainly is a turn off. And it’s the same strategy Southwest has used for most announcements. (Remember the new Rapid Rewards rollout? Bleh.)

More importantly, however, is that this shows the continued upgauging of Southwest. The 737-700s will now have 143 seats. The airline is focusing its future orders on 737-800s with a lot more seats than that. It has already said it doesn’t see much of a future for the 717. So how is Southwest going to really serve some of these smaller cities with only large-scale airplanes? It seems like there’s a disconnect here.

There’s no question Southwest can adequately serve some of the larger AirTran cities, and it will likely come up with a good model for serving the international destinations as well. But I think Southwest is going to have a tougher time serving some of these smaller cities unless it really decides to shake up the way it operates. I just haven’t seen any kind of indication from the airline that it’s going to do anything radical like that, so we’ll just have to see if some of these smaller cities can actually survive.

[Original EVOLVE seat photo via Southwest Airlines]