On Sunday evening, an AirTran Airways jet took a load of Southwest Airlines and AirTran executives on a regularly scheduled flight from Atlanta to Tampa, Fla.
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And when the flight landed late Sunday night, its arrival marked the end of AirTran Airways’ 24 years as an operating carrier.
Southwest acquired AirTran on May 2, 2011, but took more than 3½ years to take over AirTran’s cities, people and fleet as it took a go-slow approach.
The merger helped Southwest begin its first international service on July 1, pushed it to replace its aging reservations system and, for all practical purposes, finished its expansion in the lower 48 U.S. states.
The acquisition left Southwest with 88 Boeing 717 jets that it soon realized it didn’t really want. The carrier is now leasing them to Delta Air Lines, and no Boeing 717 was ever painted in Southwest colors or entered Southwest fleet. As of year’s end, there’ll be more than 30 of the smaller airplanes remaining to be converted and sent to Delta, a process that will take much of 2015.
But the merger also gave Southwest an international footprint as it took over AirTran’s seven non-U.S. destinations. It also gave it a major presence in Delta’s Atlanta stronghold.
As of October, Southwest had 46,095 full-time equivalent employees, compared to 35,644 on April 30, 2011, before the merger. Its profits have gone from $459 million in 2010 to $178 million in 2011, to $421 million in 2012, to $754 million in 2013. Through Sept. 30, its 2014 profits are $946 million.
In 2015, the costs of the merger should be almost all behind Southwest, with further synergies expected as it no longer has to operate two separate airlines.
Often forgotten is that AirTran began life in 1992 as ValuJet Airlines, a low-cost, low-fare carrier flying well-used DC-9 jets. A May 1996 crash into a Florida swamp forced the carrier’s grounding over safety issues. The next year, it acquired AirTran Airways and eventually took its name.
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Source: southwest - Google News http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&ct2=us&usg=AFQjCNHxE1WeTpwGLi6BO31jOJuK3-_wpg&clid=c3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331&cid=52778695398947&ei=5MChVLyEMOHMwAHl9IHoDw&url=http://aviationblog.dallasnews.com/2014/12/no-3-on-our-top-10-stories-of-2014-southwest-airlines-finishes-absorbing-airtran-airways.html/
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