Southwest has been pretty candid with people attending the Southwest media day and has made a number of comments and announcements that offer more clarity than we’ve seen in a while.

First up:  Southwest and Volaris Airlines will begin interlining on December 1st.  This is quicker than I would have guessed based on the radio silence we’ve heard on this subject for months now.  It’s not a codeshare because you won’t be able to buy a Southwest ticket to fly on a Volaris flight.  You will, however, be able to seemlessly transition between a Southwest flight and a Volaris flight to Mexico.  You wouldn’t be able to do codeshares at present anyway since Mexico’s air traffic system got downgraded to a Category 2 recently. 

Southwest sees the seniority list integration between its pilots and Airtran pilots as their number one issue.  I agree.  The rational people out there would have you believe that Airtran pilots should be happy no matter what since it is almost guaranteed that they’ll get a pay raise with this merger.  Sadly, rational thought doesn’t enter into the equation when it comes to these discussions.  In addition, pay raises aren’t the only factor when it comes to seniority.  Seniority also determines the type of aircraft you’ll fly and where you’ll be based out of.   I doubt it will be a “date of hire” integration and I doubt it will be a mere stapling integration either.  There will probably be some sort of weighted integration and possibly jobs in the ATL area (and perhaps a few other bases) will be “fenced” off for Airtran pilots for a period of time. 

Southwest says it will be charging $5 for WiFi access on its aircraft.  This is pretty cheap compared to the fees for Aircell on other airlines.  Apparently Southwest has done their homework and determined that’s the sweet spot for maximizing “take” on each flight.  There will be no graduated fee for varying durations of flights.  Southwest doesn’t know what it will do with Airtran aircraft equipped with Aircell because they don’t know what those contracts look like yet and they won’t until the merger is consummated.  I suspect that Aircell will remain in place until those contracts expire and then they will be replaced with R0w44 systems to harmonize the fleet.  That would be a good news for Row44 who hasn’t gained much in the way of market share when compared to Aircell.

Finally, Southwest thinks Atlanta could quickly become its biggest city once it has finished its merger with Airtran.  Las Vegas currently is the largest but Southwest execs see lots of additional route opportunity in Atlanta already.  They’ve identified at least 2 dozen new destinations that could be served and Atlanta is already pretty big for Airtran.  Look for more frequency and a net gain on routes once Southwest really takes over.

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