Precontact

Should help your work withs too!
The Daily Times
Southwest Airlines moving into Memphis
The Associated Press

MEMPHIS — Southwest Airlines is inheriting four daily flights between Memphis and Atlanta starting Monday after buying out fellow budget carrier AirTran.

Although the arrival of Southwest has been long-awaited at Memphis International Airport, the airline will only have the four flights to Atlanta to start.

The airlines set Monday as the effective date for their merger after clearing a final regulatory hurdle, an anti-trust review by the Justice Department.

Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority President Larry Cox told The Memphis Commercial Appeal that AirTran’s presence at the airport since 1993, when it began as ValuJet, and has helped hold down Memphis-Atlanta fares.

Airport officials hope Southwest has a similar effect on fares to cities served by both Delta and Southwest and that Southwest finds a way to add nonstop service from Memphis.

“I would look at places where Southwest has significant service and some transfer activity, Baltimore-Washington, Chicago-Midway and Dallas-Love Field, after the Wright amendment expires in 2014; New Orleans, Houston-Hobby, Denver, Phoenix, Las Vegas,” Cox said. “I think there’s a number of places they could go out in the West where they have significant operations.”

AirTran’s operation at Memphis is small by Southwest standards, said Seth Kaplan, managing director of Airline Weekly. Southwest likes to have eight flights a day per gate for optimum utilization of personnel and aircraft. AirTran does more outsourcing of ground operations to serve airports with fewer flights.

“I think for cities in general that have only AirTran and not Southwest, some of them are going to wonder will they still have that service at all, because Southwest does have a different model,” Kaplan said.

“Assuming they stay there, which I would expect them to, I think you would see maybe twice as much service, but it might not all necessarily be to Atlanta. It could be to Chicago or Baltimore or who knows, somewhere out West, like Denver or Phoenix.”

To the extent Southwest takes business away from Delta, the city’s passenger hub status could be threatened, Kaplan added.

“When you’re a smaller hub and you get more low-cost service, what about the hub airline? Might that make their service less viable?” he said.

© 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

DLax85

Lower ticket prices in/out of MEM (i.e. travel banks) are NOT a good thing.

oldcarpilot

Doesn't sound like new service, just now that it's official "Southwest" will have those flights, which Airtran has been doing for a while.

fly2ski

How 'bout SEA-ANC for SWA! Thats what I really want, any Southwest bubba's have intel??

threeighteen

Exactly, the amount of flights won't change (immediately), but capacity probably will depending on equipment, and fares probably will too. Still a good thing, more options in and out of MEM can't ever be a bad thing.

Runway over-runs on 32 or 25L would be interesting...

HercDriver130

and this is in the cargo section why?

threeighteen

Have you been to Memphis at all in the last few decades?

This thread is more focused towards people discussing a new option for how to get to work.

Zapata

Agreed. It should moved to the Majors section.

Even though there is some significance to your point, I think it is ancillary when this is compared to the impact on the industry.


SWA colors in ATL? Delta must be shaking in their boots.

Gunter

I've found Airtran accepted fares to be much lower than SWA. I also seldom see SWA fares the lowest with USAir and AA in the mix.

New service out of MEM? That could possibly lead to a fare war with Delta. But I put the odds on that as low.

Maybe MEM-DAL, MEM-BWI or MEM-MDW are coming

Columbia

Actually the opposite as at is considered a desperate operation which will stop at nothing to dump very low fares on cities. Southwest is considered a smart operator which will not dump stupid, low yielding capacity on a market. Gary Kelly's costs are going up by the day and the only way to appease shareholders is to keep yields high. Same with Atlanta. Many people think that fares will come tumbling down. Wait until they see Delta with the lowest fares.