I was looking at SAs routes out of ATL the other day and saw wondering how many cities could SWA realistically feed out of atlanta, looking at some of their shorter routes like ATL GSP and BNA, Is it possible that SWA could go after more southern cities and well more cities that DL serves on a daily basis from ATL? I'm not 100% on how many gates/slots they have at ATL but is it SWA being conservative with ATL expansion or is it that they don't have anymore room to expand into new markets?

Food for thought, J

https://www.southwest.com/travel_center ... p_dyn.html

I don’t anticipate WN growing much at all from ATL. The station is smaller than it was after the FL merger and WN continues to “right size” it. BNA is WN’s growth vehicle in that region.

I believe they have already given up gates that they were not utilizing so the plan is not to expand significantly more...BNA on the other hand is where they are expanding

No more adds. WN is the same size today in ATL that they were in 2014 in terms of daily depertures and a few cities have been dropped and one of two added. 737-800s and replaced -700s on some markets. That should tell you about WN’s financial performance in ATL. Maybe not awful but certainly not good enough to warrant any adds. No point in WN adding anything from ATL that is going to be 70% connecting traffic.

You don’t need to see an airline’s internal financial reports to know where a carrier does well. WN keeps adding in STL and BNA. So those must be gold mines for them. WN wants more gates in DAL, so that must do very well.

I wonder if Southwest is carrying as many people in and out of Atlanta now as AirTran did at its peak.

I am sure someone on here would know where to find that data point.

I fly out of Atlanta 99% of the time, 98% of the time DL beats SW by $20-$500, if you don’t check an bag in. Sometime even checking 2 bags in DL I am still saving compared to SW. Also SW don’t fly out of ATL to major city’s as often as DL. So it kinda hard to grow for SW in Atlanta. Every city I have flown to, SW cost more if my time is flexible. That why I don’t see SW as an LCC in Atlanta.

WN will likely grow little at ATL and will focus most of their growth at BNA. Connection heavy markets like RIC, GSP, etc will likely be shifted to BNA at some point, and I wouldn’t even rule out the possibility of ATL’s operating base status being transferred to BNA.

I see them growing more at FLL.

DL could be competing with them. Especially at Love.

KlimaBXsst wrote:

I wonder if Southwest is carrying as many people in and out of Atlanta now as AirTran did at its peak.

I am sure someone on here would know where to find that data point.

It isn't - it's carrying about 4 million fewer domestic ATL passengers than AirTran did in its last year. (And I didn't confirm that was AirTran's peak.) WN may be carrying more ATL O&D traffic, however.

https://www.transtats.bts.gov/airports.asp?pn=1

747DREAM wrote:

I fly out of Atlanta 99% of the time, 98% of the time DL beats SW by $20-$500, if you don’t check an bag in. Sometime even checking 2 bags in DL I am still saving compared to SW. Also SW don’t fly out of ATL to major city’s as often as DL. So it kinda hard to grow for SW in Atlanta. Every city I have flown to, SW cost more if my time is flexible. That why I don’t see SW as an LCC in Atlanta.

I find that amazing, because I went from being a loyal DL guy for years to WN because WN was always significantly cheaper between LGA-ATL.

Would WN switch the crew bases from ATL to BNA with the growth at BNA and shrinking at ATL?

Guess we might know why ORD and ATL trade places a lot in numbers now. Thanks Mflyer12!

not going to happen. ATL is more likely to shrink than increase. BNA is where the future is at.

I would be highly intrigued how Delta would react if Southwest reinstates the former Airtran route PNS-ATL. Ticket prices jumped considerably on the ATL-PNS route once Airtran was bought out.

KlimaBXsst wrote:

Guess we might know why ORD and ATL trade places a lot in numbers now. Thanks Mflyer12!

By what statistic?

By passengers, ATL has been #1 since 2000. ORD was last #2 in 2008. For flights I see ORD is busiest again for commercial flights. Except doesn't VNY have more flights overall?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of ... er_traffic

ATL needs more terminal Gates and runway #6. But make no mistake, for DL.

Lightsaber

Considering since the merger they've done nothing but cut Airtran's operation. Even a casual observer could probably figure so. Airtran used to have all of concourse C and half of D. Southwest occupies just half of C and that's it.

I know when it was announced, Clark Howard did everything short of orgasming on the air, but he was dead wrong about competition and prices. RIP AirTran

DALMD80 wrote:

DL could be competing with them. Especially at Love.

Don't think this will happen. Delta has the smallest presence in Texas, with United dominating IAH, American dominating DFW, and Southwest dominating Hobby and love. Not much room to grow in Texas for Delta.

747DREAM wrote:

I fly out of Atlanta 99% of the time, 98% of the time DL beats SW by $20-$500, if you don’t check an bag in. Sometime even checking 2 bags in DL I am still saving compared to SW. Also SW don’t fly out of ATL to major city’s as often as DL. So it kinda hard to grow for SW in Atlanta. Every city I have flown to, SW cost more if my time is flexible. That why I don’t see SW as an LCC in Atlanta.

Kind of surprising. Flying out of ATL, WN is almost always cheaper for me.

It's not really a question IF Southwest can expand in Atlanta, but if ATL would be the most profitable place to expand. There's plenty of demand ATL/NYC, ATL-South Florida, ATL-MCO... but maybe not at average fares to justify expansion in ATL vs. MDW, BWI, LAX, etc.

N776AU wrote:

Considering since the merger they've done nothing but cut Airtran's operation. Even a casual observer could probably figure so. Airtran used to have all of concourse C and half of D. Southwest occupies just half of C and that's it.

I know when it was announced, Clark Howard did everything short of orgasming on the air, but he was dead wrong about competition and prices. RIP AirTran

I thought FL only had half of C and half of D but I could be wrong on that.

MIflyer12 wrote:

It's not really a question IF Southwest can expand in Atlanta, but if ATL would be the most profitable place to expand. There's plenty of demand ATL/NYC, ATL-South Florida, ATL-MCO... but maybe not at average fares to justify expansion in ATL vs. MDW, BWI, LAX, etc.

Well. Not much room at BWI. Last time I checked they were over 60% of BWI ops.

It is my understanding that WN is carrying more O&D traffic to/from ATL than FL ever did and at a higher RPM. WN currently has 18 gates on C Concourse whereas FL had 31 gates on C and D, but many of those gates were only used at peak times. WN has been sitting at about 125 flights per day out of ATL for the last five years and, as mentioned, has been steadily increasing the average flight capacity. There’s easily room to add 50 more flights with the current gates if the need arises.

rjmf22 wrote:

DALMD80 wrote:

DL could be competing with them. Especially at Love.

Don't think this will happen. Delta has the smallest presence in Texas, with United dominating IAH, American dominating DFW, and Southwest dominating Hobby and love. Not much room to grow in Texas for Delta.

AUS

SierraPacific wrote:

Would WN switch the crew bases from ATL to BNA with the growth at BNA and shrinking at ATL?

This I expect to happen sooner or later as they are the leading carrier at BNA and they've been growing pretty rapidly in recent years. I believe BNA is now ahead of ATL in total flights.

gr8slvrflt wrote:

It is my understanding that WN is carrying more O&D traffic to/from ATL than FL ever did and at a higher RPM. WN currently has 18 gates on C Concourse whereas FL had 31 gates on C and D, but many of those gates were only used at peak times. WN has been sitting at about 125 flights per day out of ATL for the last five years and, as mentioned, has been steadily increasing the average flight capacity. There’s easily room to add 50 more flights with the current gates if the need arises.

Yes, but why would the when they have BNA up the road where they can dominate?

Metro ATL is growing by roughly 100K people annually. If WN doesn’t find it lucrative enough to expand @ ATL and does more of that at BNA (which is growing nicely in population also but far lower in raw numbers than ATL), then other carriers will pick it up. Same for if they shrink and give gates back in C-South. ATL is beginning the enabling projects this month to add 5-gates to T-North, and is looking to add more than that to T-South, running parallel to the runways/taxiways, in lieu of building Concourse G. While there are still more connecting pax @ ATL than O&D, both are increasing every year. That O&D growth won’t end anytime soon, and is approaching 40%, far higher than it used to be, even when the total pax figure was far lower than present. 40% O&D would mean about 43M annually based on 2018’s 107M total, which will likely be about 110M this year. Traffic is up by 500K for the first 2-months of 2019. Will be interesting to see how WN chooses to serve ATL in the next decade. Regardless, ATL won't miss a beat overall.

Fargo wrote:

rjmf22 wrote:

DALMD80 wrote:

DL could be competing with them. Especially at Love.

Don't think this will happen. Delta has the smallest presence in Texas, with United dominating IAH, American dominating DFW, and Southwest dominating Hobby and love. Not much room to grow in Texas for Delta.

AUS

Austin does not compare to the Houston or Dallas markets.

rjmf22 wrote:

Fargo wrote:

rjmf22 wrote:

Don't think this will happen. Delta has the smallest presence in Texas, with United dominating IAH, American dominating DFW, and Southwest dominating Hobby and love. Not much room to grow in Texas for Delta.

AUS

Austin does not compare to the Houston or Dallas markets.

Ok, but I'm not sure I'm following. What does that have to do with Delta growing in Texas?

KlimaBXsst wrote:

I wonder if Southwest is carrying as many people in and out of Atlanta now as AirTran did at its peak.

I am sure someone on here would know where to find that data point.

A few year ago I remember the CEO stating they carried more O&D passengers to ATL than Airtran did. SWA has better option like MCO, BNA, and BWI to transfer passengers.

It would be nice for a return of MEM-ATL on SWA. The Airtran flight from MEM had too many connecting passengers and SWA canceled it.

It would be great to see WN expand in ATL, but I don't believe WN's costs are significantly lower than those of DL anymore, so they will continue to limit themselves to markets that are low-hanging fruit (LGA/DCA/LAX/MCO/BNA/HOU, etc.) from a city that has frequent flights to every major market in the country (exceptions are a handful of smaller markets out west). If they dump too much capacity into ATL, they'll end up diluting their RASM, and they cannot afford to do that anymore with historically higher CASM. So no, I doubt if we'll see much more from WN in ATL, but there's always hope that they will expand to a few more cities.

N383SW wrote:

N776AU wrote:

Considering since the merger they've done nothing but cut Airtran's operation. Even a casual observer could probably figure so. Airtran used to have all of concourse C and half of D. Southwest occupies just half of C and that's it.

I know when it was announced, Clark Howard did everything short of orgasming on the air, but he was dead wrong about competition and prices. RIP AirTran

I thought FL only had half of C and half of D but I could be wrong on that.

You are partially correct. FL always had half of terminal C dating back to ValueJet days, but they only had a forth of the gates at Terminal D.

ericm2031 wrote:

I believe they have already given up gates that they were not utilizing so the plan is not to expand significantly more...BNA on the other hand is where they are expanding

Interesting. Who took over those gates (I suspect some might have been B6?) and is the transfer permanent?

I've been a frequent flyer out of ATL for decades. FL had a much bigger presence at ATL and also a fan base. WN didn't win the hearts of many in the area (nor the businesses). I live in HOU where we have a huge WN fan base. It will be hard to keep up with their current schedules out of ATL. Things have changed in the recent years and WN growth has shifted elsewhere. Sorry ATL boys....you will be lucky to see WN keep up with its current routes

I just connected through ATL last week traveling from MCO, to PHL. There were plenty others
making the same connection. I usually fly from EWR but WN dropped the EWR-MCO flights so O drove to PHL. ATL-EWR seems like one of the biggest opportunities for WN, the local traffic
Alone could support four daily. Add on top of that the fact that ATL makes a better connecting point for EWR travelers than BWI.

Besides EWR, I would say PNS, Panama City Beach, CHS, CLT, MBJ, NAS, SJU, AUA, would be other good additions. ATL would probably make a better gateway to the Caribbean for WN than FLL which doesn’t seem to be working out.

I think ATL should be a bit bigger, right now it’s at 126 daily flights according to the WN website. I think 150-160 daily flights would put WN in a better position. It would put ATL firmly in the second tier of hubs for WN with DAL, HOU and OAK.


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cranberrysaus wrote:

747DREAM wrote:

I fly out of Atlanta 99% of the time, 98% of the time DL beats SW by $20-$500, if you don’t check an bag in. Sometime even checking 2 bags in DL I am still saving compared to SW. Also SW don’t fly out of ATL to major city’s as often as DL. So it kinda hard to grow for SW in Atlanta. Every city I have flown to, SW cost more if my time is flexible. That why I don’t see SW as an LCC in Atlanta.

Kind of surprising. Flying out of ATL, WN is almost always cheaper for me.

Same for me. I often find WN is at least $20-30 cheaper than DL, but DL beats them on frequency and convenience by a long shot

STT757 wrote:

I just connected through ATL last week traveling from MCO, to PHL. There were plenty others
making the same connection. I usually fly from EWR but WN dropped the EWR-MCO flights so O drove to PHL. ATL-EWR seems like one of the biggest opportunities for WN, the local traffic
Alone could support four daily. Add on top of that the fact that ATL makes a better connecting point for EWR travelers than BWI.

Besides EWR, I would say PNS, Panama City Beach, CHS, CLT, MBJ, NAS, SJU, AUA, would be other good additions. ATL would probably make a better gateway to the Caribbean for WN than FLL which doesn’t seem to be working out.

I think ATL should be a bit bigger, right now it’s at 126 daily flights according to the WN website. I think 150-160 daily flights would put WN in a better position. It would put ATL firmly in the second tier of hubs for WN with DAL, HOU and OAK.


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But why? Why lose money vs DL when you have BNA up the road where you dominate and the cost per emplanement is cheaper?

Taeks wrote:

I would be highly intrigued how Delta would react if Southwest reinstates the former Airtran route PNS-ATL. Ticket prices jumped considerably on the ATL-PNS route once Airtran was bought out.

All of those panhandle markets are ridiculously overpriced on DL to ATL. But unfortunately it doesn't make any sense on any other airline. All of the other connections are way out of the way.

It really weird, the more Southwest cuts Atlanta flights, the more passengers fly through the Atlanta airport. 107 million in 2018 and Atlanta is among the fastest growing metros in the US. It would be stupid of Southwest not to add flights like Atlanta to Myrtle Beach and Atlanta to Charleston, SC.

STT757 wrote:

I just connected through ATL last week traveling from MCO, to PHL. There were plenty others
making the same connection. I usually fly from EWR but WN dropped the EWR-MCO flights so O drove to PHL. ATL-EWR seems like one of the biggest opportunities for WN, the local traffic
Alone could support four daily. Add on top of that the fact that ATL makes a better connecting point for EWR travelers than BWI.

Besides EWR, I would say PNS, Panama City Beach, CHS, CLT, MBJ, NAS, SJU, AUA, would be other good additions. ATL would probably make a better gateway to the Caribbean for WN than FLL which doesn’t seem to be working out.

I think ATL should be a bit bigger, right now it’s at 126 daily flights according to the WN website. I think 150-160 daily flights would put WN in a better position. It would put ATL firmly in the second tier of hubs for WN with DAL, HOU and OAK.


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Great points. I think the should add Augusta and Savannah from ATL as well.

I remember when some were acting as if it was the 2nd Coming when WN announced the FL acquisition. A poster on here mentioned Clark Howard. Prime example. I couldn’t believe how many people thought WN would be able to put further pressure on fares and stimulate traffic. That had already been done by FL for the most part, over a number of years. Pretty sure that DL was throwing a huge bash at the G.O. the day that announcement was made, because they knew WN would not be the type of operator FL was in flying to so many smaller markets which are some serious DL bread & butter routes. It was no surprise to me when WN axed service to multiple smaller markets and shrunk its overall ATL footprint. I’m not sure FL could have hung on for this long and still been independent and profitable, so had WN not bought them, things could look very differently as far as the carrier mix. WN acquired FL to take out a competitor, gain an instant foothold in ATL, and get their hands on dozens of fairly new B73G’s. So, in that respect, mission accomplished.

AAflyguy

Just my antidotal observation as someone who connects through ATL on a regular basis on DL:

In the FL days, they had a much more notable presence - more gates, what seemed like more aircraft on the ground during peak times, and more movements,
With WN, it seems like they have a much smaller presence - fewer gates and while supposedly having the same number of departures they are more spread throughout the day and you don't even notice the WN ops in the sea of DL.

PSU.DTW.SCE wrote:

Just my antidotal observation as someone who connects through ATL on a regular basis on DL:

In the FL days, they had a much more notable presence - more gates, what seemed like more aircraft on the ground during peak times, and more movements,
With WN, it seems like they have a much smaller presence - fewer gates and while supposedly having the same number of departures they are more spread throughout the day and you don't even notice the WN ops in the sea of DL.

WN has far fewer flights than FL at its peak. But, WN really is looking to serve more of the O&D passengers than connecting, so the banks of flights aren’t as critical as they were for FL, or for DL today. But DL’s operation at 1,000+ daily departures makes it look like dominance all day, every day. Kinda hard not to at that level. Love seeing it whenever I’m @ ATL. Far easier to witness than say AA @ DFW because of how the terminals are laid out, both in positioning and shape. At ATL, those parallel concourses pack a lot into a relatively small footprint.

For all the FL fans unfortunately ATL wasn't the reason WN bought them. If it was it would have connected a lot more dots between both networks. WN buying AirTran was all about killing off a main LCC in the Eastern,Midwest and South. AirTran was shopping and WN was buying.
WN ATL current network feeds all of it's prime network and gives ATL access to it Rapid rewards customer base.
Those who fly WN today flew bargain basement fares at FL. If AirTran Business class was successful as the FL fans love to believe it would have never found itself being bought by it's competitor.
WN stripped the money losing markets from the FL ATL network and actually turned into a profitable market for the needs of WN.
WN growing ATL in the future? I say probably not.

Flyguy

I think WN will toy with adding a few flights here and there in ATL, but if WN grow measurably at a DL hub in the years ahead my best guess is they'll target SLC. Recently they brought back SAN and will restart STL. They could also go back into 4-5 former original Morris Air being SNA, PDX, BOI, GEG and SEA. AS has competed very well with DL at SLC for those pairs & WN pulled out. WN typically does better with startups which SLC is loaded with.

DLvsWN wrote:

Also talking down to FL fans is funny here. Is it so wrong that they enjoyed a particular airline before it was vultured in the name of industry consolidation and monopoly pricing power?

I don't think it's "talking down" to anyone to point out that FL in its last decade wasn't especially successful financially, with operating margins between 5 and 7% in good years. And while hindsight is 20/20, I think AirTran would have ended up in a world of hurt competing with the very effectively managed Delta which emerged from the merger with NWA.

AirTran's customers benefited immensely from the fact that the airline's relatively small size meant they had to be far more aggressive on pricing. They were in smaller markets like MLI, SRQ, MDT, ABE, FNT, CAK, DAY, BKG, etc. because they needed to chase smaller revenue streams to make the network profitable. Yeah, it sucks for those folks but WN's acquisition of FL also opened up greater competition to ATL from cities/regions where WN is strong and it also arguably led to more effective utilization of assets like FL's slot portfolio at LGA & DCA.

The big change at ATL is effectively that WN pumps a lot fewer low-yielding connections through the airport. And WN's management doesn't want to get into an expensive war with DL at ATL because they have more profitable things to do with their planes and employees. They're relatively content to take maybe 15-20% share of passengers who prefer complimentary checked bags and no change fees to being 43rd on the list for an upgrade to one of the 2 F seats left thanks to FCM.

N776AU wrote:

Airtran used to have all of concourse C and half of D.

FL never had more than the southern half of C. The northern half was ASA (post-EA, of course). They also used maybe 10 or 15 gates on D, but some of those gates were common-use and I'm fairly certain the rest were only preferential-use. Those D gates had the standard gate displays for the airport rather than anything FL-specific. It should also be noted that C-South lost 4 gates as a result of moving to an all-737 operation, as the wingspan of the 73G/738 is a bit greater than that of the 717.

Im shocked WN is still running BOS-ATL with it being only one flight per day running against B6's multiple turns and DL's 12X day.