Southwest Airlines’ spring flight schedule, released Monday, reveals the next four AirTran Airways cities to be swallowed up and converted to Southwest services.
AirTran will end routes to and from Flint, Mich.; Charlotte, N.C.; Rochester, N.Y.; and Portland, Maine on April 13, 2013. Those routes will be available the next day as fully-branded Southwest services.
Following , Dallas-based Southwest is gradually enveloping AirTran’s operations and flipping them to the Southwest brand. AirTran’s future presence at Denver International Airport remains uncertain.
The company’s domestic operations may be changing over to the Southwest brand, but the spring schedule reveals AirTran’s international operations growing.
AirTran will begin a new, daily service between Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, and Baltimore/Washington on April 14, 2013. AirTran began a new seasonal route between Denver and Cancun in April.
The Southwest-AirTran integration process is expected to take several years, but a new ticketing interface will allow passengers to build connecting flights between the two.
“We remain on track to launch connection of the two airlines’ networks early next year and significantly optimize the combined networks compared to third quarter 2012,” said Southwest CEO Gary Kelly in the
Kristen Leigh Painter: 303-954-1638, kpainter@denverpost.com or twitter.com/kristenpainter
