Southwest Massively Cuts Atlanta Flights

OMAAT’s own weirdo Delta sycophant is going to have a day!

While I feel bad for any employee who could lose a job over this, a paid transfer to BNA would be a great deal for a WN employee. Nashville is a far superior place to live.

As much as … a certain commenter … may disagree, I felt WN was the best out of ATL. The ultra low cost carriers are never amazing, and DL is always going to take advantage of its fortress hub position to charge more for not much more so at this point i’m Dunn with Delta

The only surprise is that WN took this long to realize that they could not compete with Delta in the world's largest airline hub. They gave up on other airline hubs that weren't near as big as DL at ATL. Perhaps it was a point of pride in not wanting to admit that the AirTran merger didn't work but WN was a shadow of what FL had and has been steadily shrinking.

I'm not sure that DL is as happy as some might think. WN was a wounded animal that DL could beat. Returning gates to the airport opens the potential for more competition. Who knows who might take them - there are assertions that DL has first right of refusal - but I would bet that, if anything, other low cost and ultra low cost carriers will move into WN's half of the C concourse and the E concourse will become more DL and overflow international.

The sad thing about all of this is that it took Elliott to force WN to make public what wasn't working on their route system - and it wasn't just ATL. Let's see what the next few hours holds but WN will be doing more pruning.

Combined with AA and B6, DL and UA have plenty of domestic growth opportunities. It is particularly noteworthy that Scott Kirby was convinced that UA's growth would come from ULCCs but it is the "middle tier" of the industry that is providing the most growth opportunities for DL.

Not surprising at all. ATL is dominated by DL and the big 3 US carriers long ago figured out that basic economy fares, even with tweaks, allows them to be nimble competitors to the LC and ULCC carriers. Southwest offers no compelling Atlanta originating or terminating itinerary a reason to fly it frankly. I would expect WN to cut deeper into ATL in the next six months and eventually reduce it to a smaller focus at best.

there are other details of WN's turnaround plan including adding some sort of interline partnership with Icelandair to start.

Also, their extra legroom section will have about 5 inches extra legroom on up to 1/3 of the seats. regular coach legroom will clearly shrink some but they say it will still be at or above industry averages.

Will the Southwest fanboys finally admit that Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson was a complete and utter failure?

It's pretty clear that they weren't making the hub even more profitable over the years, they were trimming losses the whole time.

How embarrassing.

CrankyFlier had a nice 2013 article titled "What it Means When Southwest Says It Has De-Hubbed Atlanta"

He also had a nice 2010 CBS article detailing the 4 reasons why this merger was a good idea - namely, knocking out competition and creating room for themselves at numerous airports, including ATL.

None of us were sure what Kelly et al thought before, after, and now long after the AirTran merger and acquisition of the ATL hub. Would love to hear the true story.

who are the southwest fanboys? I agree this ATL cut is long overdue. WN was living in a fantasyland if they thought having a quarter of the share of Delta was going to ever be a profitable venture.

Southwest certainly has places where they kick Delta's butt with their mid-tier "non-hub but hub" cities, but ATL was never going to be one of the places WN would win. Their cost structure is too high to be a cost leader vs the legacies these days.

I wish they could have held off on this until after they changed over to the new seating plan. I live in ATL, and a lot of the times, WN offers the best value to FLL/MIA and LGA. I can't remember the last time I took Delta to those cities. I even took a run at the companion pass when they had the recent credit card offer and it has been fantastic.
The reason waiting might have been a good idea is that when I talk to people about the pass or WN in general, the number one complaint I hear in ATL is they hate the seating and boarding process. I genuinely think their interest here will increase with that model. Essentially, the choices are going to be Delta or Spirit for us locals that value Non-Stop.

Southwest bought AirTran for a bunch of 737's, everything else was secondary.

Hopefully DL will utilize larger aircraft in the ATL-JAX route. We used to get L-1011’s and 762’s back in the day, now mostly 752 and 321.

DL must be like a pig in sh*t today. Of course they'll take the gates that WN is giving back and squat on them - put in a few more CRJs to places nobody wants to go.

I love the process. Delta flights take forever to board. 75% (guesstimate) of Delta passengers have some kind of status and boarding is painfully slow.

This one hurts. Now completely dependent on DL to get to ATL. Sigh... They will change aircraft or increase frequency no doubt.

Delta operates the highest percentage of mainline flights at any US carrier hub for a carrier that uses regional jets.

If DL gains gates, they will be about 80% used by mainline jets - just as occurs today