Airtran has had Skywest flying 6 routes for it out of Milwaukee and one of Southwest’s first moves is to dissolve that codeshare and start flying routes on its own. New routes will include flights to Des Moines, Akron-Canton and St. Louis.
As you can imagine, SWA pilots are thrilled. This goes to a central principle with Southwest, namely flying its own routes and flying routes that are profitable on their own.
I’ve found no information on what equipment will be used but my guess is that we’ll see 717s and 737-500s re-deployed as Southwest rationalizes services out of cities that both SWA and Airtran serve. The best candidate for those new routes are 717s as they have the right capacity and they’re all in reach with a 717.
The merger will allow SWA to find those new routes that many cities have been clamoring for. For the first time, Southwest has real depth when it comes to finding the route aircraft for the right route. Look for more routes developing both in the Rust Belt, Midwest and the South as time goes by. All three areas are places where SWA has had good luck and with the route overlap that exists in focus cities such as Milwaukee and Baltimore as well as in Florida, I think we’ll see a number of new routes and re-deployments of aircraft as time goes by.
