AirTran Brand to Disappear by 2014 End

AirTran, owned by Southwest Airlines will soon vanish. Acquired by Southwest Airlines in 2010 and finally merged in 2011, AirTran Airways was since then destined to vanish away completely.

Gary Kelly, CEO Southwest airlines said that AirTran as a brand will altogether do away by the end of 2014. This was long expected from us and we are glad that by this year end the integration procedure will finally complete. He further said that many industry experts anticipated this absorption procedure to complete by the first half of this year, however this is not true. It is a tedious process and we do not wish to make any mistakes in the same and hence we are taking out own time to do the same.

As per Kelly the rising fuel prices and changing economics were the two key factors behind the delay. Since air fuel prices have hiked many folds since 2010 resulting in expensive plane tickets, the integration procedure not only became complex, tedious but resulted is quite a few changes for Southwest.

One of such changes was the decision to not operate out of Atlanta, the hub and spoke of AirTran Airways. And other such change was to retire Boeing 717 jets. Theses aircrafts became less desirable for the fact that Southwest’s was of operation was far different than that of AirTran. And they decided to discard theses older aircrafts and get them replaced by their much favored Boeing 737s.