Earlier this week, Southwest publicly announced its first schedule changes for its new 
AirTran subsidiary. The changes, though small, give us a lot of insight into how Southwest is thinking about its AirTran purchase. It’s actually kind of exciting.
When Southwest purchased AirTran, it had to make two quick moves. The first was the pull out of DFW. We already talked about that here. The second was to end AirTran’s regional partnership with SkyWest. SkyWest had been flying to smaller cities out of Milwaukee, but that couldn’t continue under Southwest’s deal with its unions. (And Southwest probably wouldn’t have wanted to continue it anyway.) So it disappears on September 6, but unlike the DFW decision, this one opened up more questions. Would Southwest try to continue serving some of those cities served by SkyWest or would it walk away? Now we know. Here’s what will happen on September 6. All of these are to/from Milwaukee:
| Destination | Daily Flights Today | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Akron/Canton | 2 | Replaced with two daily AirTran 717s |
| Des Moines | 2 | Replaced with two daily AirTran 717s |
| Indianapolis | 3 | Canceled |
| Omaha | 3 | Canceled |
| Pittsburgh | 3 | Canceled |
| St Louis | 3 | Replaced with two daily Southwest 737s |
So why do I say this is exciting? Because there’s a lot we can take away from this.
First, it’s important to know that SkyWest was flying these flights at its own risk. It shared revenue with AirTran, but AirTran didn’t have to reimburse SkyWest for costs. SkyWest had planes sitting on the ground and thought this would be a good use for those airplanes. Why is it, then, that Southwest/AirTran ends up canceling those markets with more flight frequencies? Wouldn’t you expect those to do better? Not exactly.
The difference is that Indianapolis, Omaha, and Pittsburgh are already in the Southwest system. You can fly Southwest from those cities and connect to just about any other city in the Southwest network. In other words, SkyWest was bringing people into Milwaukee and connecting into a hub operation on AirTran. Southwest no longer needs that because it already has ways to flow those people into the Southwest system.
Akron/Canton and Des Moines, however, do not have Southwest service yet. In fact, these had been two hotly-debated cities. How (if?) would Southwest continue to serve them after the merger? That fact that Southwest has decided to upgauge these flights to be on 717s is good news for them. And it shows that Southwest really does want to use those 717s to open up mid-size markets that it doesn’t serve today.
I actually wouldn’t expect these cities to necessarily keep service to Milwaukee in the long run. Today, the only other AirTran flight in Des Moines is a weekend service to Orlando. Without Milwaukee, Des Moines is an island. Akron/Canton is different with a lot of service up and down the east coast. But Milwaukee is the only real gateway to the west (unless you head south to Atlanta first).
Once the Southwest and AirTran systems merge, you might see that shift to Chicago/Midway because Southwest can flow more people into the system that way. That’s a powerful thing and it should allow the airline to serve some of these smaller cities in a way that AirTran couldn’t alone. This makes it clear to me that Southwest wants to stay in those markets. That’s what’s exciting.
St Louis seems like a different story to me. Southwest has slowly been ramping up in St Louis since American pulled down. This is just another route that Southwest probably thinks can work now so it has put some airplanes in there. It will also start flying Milwaukee to Denver once a day to complement AirTran’s single daily service. So we might be seeing the beginnings of an aircraft routing optimization project.
In the end, this is great news for Southwest loyalists who want to be able to fly to smaller cities. It’s also great news for the small to medium-sized cities that have been trying to attract Southwest for years.
[Original photos via Flickr user wbaiv, Flickr user cliff1066™, and Wikimedia Commons/CC 2.0]
17 comments on “Southwest’s First Scheduling Moves at AirTran Give Us Insight Into the Merger Plans”
The final route map should be interesting to see once all is said and done. But it could really be years of trial and error to see what final out come might be.
ATL should be the real interesting dot on the map, WN may just put all its own 737’s in there and move all smaller aircraft out to compete better against DL. There must be markets on the WN map that would better be served by the 717’s then the larger 737’s, and WN may just change itself completely.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens at CAK…and CLE, even, depending on what UA/CO does there. But back to CAK…I have to think its LGA service is toast? Unless if it’s one of those funky slots slated for smaller communities.
Other than Atlanta and maybe Chicago/Milwaukee, NE Ohio (CLE/CAK) will be one of the most interesting places to watch as the combined WN/FL unfolds.
CAK-MKE being upgauged to 717s is a preliminary positive sign. The CAK-LGA flights seem to be successful as FL started a third daily recently. I know that slots at DCA are reserved for smaller communities (hence the daily CAK-DCA flight on US) but do not know if LGA has the same rules. If so, that could help CAK keep those flights.
I assume that WN will want to create a westbound system link from CAK via MDW flights. Currently, CAK has service to ORD via three daily UA express flights.
That’s a good question. I would think that with such precious few slots at LGA, CAK might lose that flight. We’ll see.
Do you know if LGA has slots reserved for small/mid size communities like DCA does? Given the vagaries of governmental regulation, I don’t want to assume that there is any consistency between the two slot controlled airports.
So that’s how you make a 717…
What about Charlotte, NC? Will Southwest keep that AirTran route?
Frontier flies CAK to DEN and point swest.
who cares. frontier now sucks thanks to republic
I believe the CAK-DEN service on Frontier is seasonal only.
Nope, it’s year around, twice daily, and usually pretty full, at least the half-dozen times I’ve taken it. They’ve even bumped one of the flights up to an A320. It’s not that cheap of a ticket, either, which leads me to believe it’s one of the bright spots, revenue and lack of competition-wise, in Frontier’s schedule.
My mistake, glad to hear it. With Republic stations at CLE and CAK, wonder if CLE will get a DEN flight as well? FronMidPublic is such a mess right now, who really knows?
I wonder how much Airtran/Southwest had to pay Skywest to kick them off the property?
I don’t actually know that they had to pay anything. This deal was really a desperation deal for SkyWest. They had airplanes on the ground and thought they could make some money flying for AirTran, so they did it. SkyWest took on all the risk, and I bet there wasn’t much notice required for cancellation.
They didn’t have to pay SkyWest anything. SkyWest already anticipated this with the merger, and like CrankyFlier said, SkyWest already was taking on the risks. Also, SkyWest’s new agreement with Alaska will create more use for its planes than it already has. At the end of this year, SkyWest will have over 2,000 departures, up from 1800 today.
That’s a day btw.
I agree that Akron looks interesting for Southwest’s future – If you look at their route map, Southwest has a number of “hublets” for which connecting the dots within a region is done: STL, Kansas City, Nashville, Albuquerque, Houston – and not all their connections are made through the biggest hubs of Baltimore, Chicago, Las Vegas and Phoenix. I can see Akron as being a stopping point for making connections in the Ohio/Michigan/Indiana/Kentucky region and in the other direction, Buffalo, Rochester, Albany, and the already served locations like Boston and Laguardia… without running everybody through Midway and Baltimore.