Dallas-based Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV) is suspending three seasonal routes at Branson Airport by AirTran Airways to Chicago, Houston and Baltimore, and adding three weekly flights to Atlanta following an examination of AirTran’s performance in smaller markets.
Southwest Airlines finalized its purchase May 4 of Orlando, Fla.-based AirTran Holdings Inc. (NYSE: AAI), parent company of AirTran Airways, in a common-stock deal worth roughly $1 billion.
Southwest spokeswoman Katie McDonald cited weak demand for the Branson routes to Chicago, Houston and Baltimore as the reason for scaling back its winter flights.
“With our latest schedule that has come out, we have exited some routes out of Branson on a seasonal basis, from Dec. 4-April 9. We hope to bring them back with future schedules, but the exit on the seasonal basis was based on weak performance,” McDonald said, declining to outline the criteria for the determination. “Our goal is always to match our flying with customer demand, and unfortunately these routes were not in high demand for the time frame.”
Branson Airport Executive Director Jeff Bourk said he anticipated the decision to suspend the recently added routes during the winter, and with the announcement of the new routes to Atlanta beginning Jan. 7, the airport has a net gain of three weekly flights with the airline compared to the beginning of this year.
“It’s the off season for Branson, so those flights are ending for the season, but the exciting part is … we’ll have more flights with AirTran this January than we did last January,” Bourk said.
AirTran is canceling four flights per week to Chicago, four a week to Houston and one a week to Baltimore, Bourk said. Southwest added those seasonal routes this year, he said, shortly after the company purchased AirTran. Branson Airport would have 10 weekly flights to Atlanta once the new routes are added in January.
"It’s all about schedule optimization," McDonald said. Southwest schedules have been closely tied to traffic demand for some time, she said, and now that AirTran is part of its system, those flight routes are under the same scrutiny.
“We are just constantly looking at where the profitability is in our system,” she said. “We are legally able to work together, but we don’t have our single operating certificate. We are still operating as two airlines, but we are able to work together and share best practices as far as schedule optimization.”
She said it would take several years to fully integrate the systems even after the single operating certificate is obtained, which is expected to happen in the first quarter of 2012.
Bourk said once the two airlines are acting as one, Branson Airport should benefit.
“When that’s in place, that is going to be exciting because that will mean you’ll be able to go to
Southwest.com and buy tickets to and from Branson to any place that Southwest flies,” Bourk said.
Since the purchase of AirTran by Southwest in May, the airline has increased its seats in the market by 57 percent compared to May 2010, he said. Frontier Airlines increased its seat availability in Branson by 140 percent during roughly the same time period.
The increase in routes, Bourk said, has buoyed an airport that entered into a funding and forbearance agreement on April 12 with UMB Bank, the trustee overseeing the $114 million in revenue bonds issued to fund the airport’s construction. Under the agreement, the airport has to meet enplanement and revenue requirements to avoid foreclosure.
Through the first seven months of 2011, the most recent data available from the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Branson Airport’s passenger traffic has increased by 32.8 percent.[[In-content Ad]]
