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Airline Mergers / Southwest / Southwest Airlines / AirTran / Airline News / Travel News / LCCs / → All Tags

Seven Easy Answers Regarding the Future of Southwest with AirTran

For frequent flyers of Southwest and AirTran alike, yesterday's big announcement brought up many questions. Both airlines may be low-cost carriers, but the way they run things and what they do and don't charge for isn't in sync...yet.

So how will this all go down in the end? Well, when Southwest is done with it, AirTran will be no more; there's no branding merger like what's going on with the United/Continental deal. In the end, everything will be Southwest. But what about certain AirTran policies, like checked baggage fees? For answers to this and six other big questions, we turned here for the answers, and got them:

Q: AirTran currently charges to check your first two bags. Will Southwest adopt this?
A. No. Say goodbye to paying $20 for the 1st checked bag and $25 for the 2nd, since Southwest will lump AirTran into its successful "Bags Fly Free" policy, where your first two bags are cool.

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Airline Mergers / Southwest / Southwest Airlines / AirTran / Airline News / Travel News / LCCs / → All Tags

Whoa, Huge News: Southwest Airlines to Take Over AirTran

1.4 Billion Dollars. That's how much Southwest is paying out to take over fellow low-cost carrier AirTran, in a big announcement early this morning. The airline merger, which will eventually completely fold AirTran's airplanes, routes, staff and branding into the Southwest mold, "has been unanimously approved by the boards of directors of each company."

Way to start a week! So here's what Southwest is getting out of the deal:

· Southwest is going international
Even though Southwest has over 500 planes on its own and a whole dumptruck full of routes, they haven't quite crossed the international line yet. AirTran already operates to "key near-international leisure markets in the Caribbean and Mexico," not to mention the prospects of adding a few to Canada. Southwest is going over the border, ya'll!

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United and Continental Continue Their Path Towards Happy Marriage

Last week, shareholders gave the good-to-go signal for United and Continental to officially shack up. At this point it’s full speed ahead, as the two airlines work to merge their pilots, flight attendants, planes, and branding into one big happy family. However, we’d still expect quite a little bit of time before you recognize the two as just one. There’s still quite a few unknown details, like how the combined airline will handle differences in levels of cabin service and frequent flyer programs, but here’s some stuff we do know.

We already know about their kind of lame logo, and the fact that they’ll be using the United name to, uh, unite the two airlines together. Right now, Continental’s current hub in Cleveland will probably be safe, but it might only be busy for the next two years. The new airline needs to maintain 90% of its current flights for the next couple of years, but after that it sounds like they’re free to send their planes and staff elsewhere if need be. So make sure to enjoy your time in "The Mistake by the M'Lake" if you pass through.

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Airline News / British Airways / Iberia / Airline Mergers / Travel News / Airlines / Airline Industry / → All Tags

British Airways and Iberia Want to Make It a Threesome

British Airways is hungry, and the airline can only be satisfied by gobbling up other airlines. The old news from BA is that they're already working to join forces with Iberia, with the hope of getting things official by the end of this year. However, the newest addition is that the not-yet-combined airline is already looking at around 12 other airlines to acquire.

They might be interested in everything from Indian to Hong Kong carriers, but some of them are harder to consider buying than others, due to issues with the foreign ownership rules present in some countries. Those that aren’t subject to such regulations might be getting phone calls as soon as this week, so they better be willing to fly the Union Jack.

Everything is still speculative at this point, but the new British Airways-Iberia combination could be looking at American Airlines, LAN, Cathay Pacific, and even Qantas. With these new possible mergers and the pending deal between United and Continental, Delta better enjoy their title of the world’s largest airline while it lasts.

[Photo: BriYYZ]

Airline Mergers / Airline News / Airlines / LAN / TAM / Airline Industry / LATAM / → All Tags

South America's TAM and LAN Airlines to Combine Letters, Planes and Pilots

There’s a little bit of alphabet soup going on south of the equator. LAN Airlines of Chile and TAM Airlines or Brazil are thinking about shacking up to serve as South America’s largest airline. We do need to get to Brazil for the summer Olympics, so maybe we’ll get to check out the combined airline sooner than later.

Together the combined airline will be known as LATAM Airlines Group, and will include the two airlines as well as some affiliates and cargo operations. Like all airline mergers and buddying up there’s all kind of rules and regulations to follow, so it’s far from a done deal just yet. Both airlines need to work out all the details, but they did pass notes and confirmed that they like each other by circling yes—so we think they’ll be good-to-go.

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Airline Mergers / Livery / Continental / United / Airline News / → All Tags

Is United's New Merger Look Pretty or Pretty Lame?

The closer we get to seeing United and Continental, the weirder it feels. On their way to ousting Delta as the world's largest airline, the UA/CO combo is rebranding and they've just announced their new airplane livery (see it above).

We can't decide if we like it or not. The font of "United" is obviously a modern update, and they've switched to capitalize all letters, but the Continental tail just look off. Also, it's very white.

Now we're turning it over to you. What do you think of the new look?

[Image: unitedcontinentalmerger.com]

Airline News / British Airways / Iberia / Airline Mergers / Travel News / Airlines / Airline Industry / American Airlines / → All Tags

British Airways and American Airlines are Go to Collude on Prices and Routes

Another week, another round of shakeups at British Airways. Last week it was their merger with Iberia. Before that it was their new non-union crew. Now it's the news that their 14-year quest to expand their trans-Atlantic alliance with American Airlines has finally been approved by US and EU regulators. The new American/British Airways/Iberia arrangement allows them to effectively function as a single company: setting prices, selling tickets, and scheduling routes.

Where you fall on this deal depends on where you are in the airline industry. If you're part of the oneworld alliance, you see the much-sought approval as only fair. Lufthansa/United and Air France/Delta basically have the same setup under the umbrellas of Star Alliance and SkyTeam, respectively. But if you're not part of any major alliance and/or Heathrow is part of your personal global airline empire, this is exactly the kind of decision that would ruin your weekend. Cue Richard Branson: "millions of passengers...will suffer the consequences of this monster monopoly."

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Merger of British Airways and Iberia Gets EU Greenlight

The thing about a wave of massive labor strikes that threaten to take down your entire company, is that they really free you up to brainstorm. What've you got to lose? So in addition to creating an entirely new fleet designed to circumvent unions, British Airways has been aggressively pursuing cost-cutting in a host of other ways.

One of those, the merger with Iberia that they formally inked at the end of last month after a year of teasing, just won EU approval. The result will be Europe's third-largest airline, a market share of about $7.5 billion, and—hopefully for them—an end to the money bleeding both have been experiencing. And, in a nice change, it might not be a total disaster for consumers.

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United and Continental Still Have Plenty of Work Before They Fly Together

Everything has been pretty quiet lately when it comes to the proposed shacking up of Continental and United. We’ve almost gotten over their thrown together mockup of a new livery, and now we want to know if this thing is actually going to happen after all.

So far so good with merging the pilots of the two airlines. Contract and labor talks are going well, and some even think that things could be finalized by the end of the year. That’s pretty good, since that is when the two airlines are supposed to make the deal final. And once the contract stuff is finished, that’s when the real fun will begin. They’ll have to reorder seniority between all the pilots to figure out who gets the most vacation days and best routes to fly.

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Airline Mergers / American Airlines / US Airways / Airline Industry / Airlines / Airline News / → All Tags

American and US Airways Not So Much in a Merger Mood Right Now

After an extensive roundup of expert opinion on the prospects for an airline merger between American Airlines and US Airways, we're ready to declare that either the two airlines will definitely merge lest "bankruptcy and even liquidation [become] not just possible but likely" or that a union "would come as a big surprise" because "officials at American seem disinterested." You can basically pick which one you want at random, since that's what top industry analysts seem to be doing.

On the "yes merger" side, you've got basic industry dynamics. Up through 2008, American was the country's largest airline. Then it was surpassed by Delta/Northwest. Now Delta/Northwest is about to be surpassed by United/Continental. American faces the prospect of running a distant third, which isn't a place you want to be in a cut-throat industry that's already hemorrhaging money. There's also this sense that this is how things are supposed to go, that the industry is supposed to shrink to three major carriers, and that American and US Air are the last of the legacy holdouts.

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Airline Mergers / Congress / United / Continental / Politics / Airlines / Airline Industry / Airline News / → All Tags

Political Hurdles Coming for the United and Continental Merger

Continental Airlines has filed the required papers to make their airline merger with United official, so now the only things left are to dot the i's, cross the t's, go through the onerous process of getting government approval, and then go through the even more onerous process of physically combining the two fleets.

That last part is going to have to wait a while, since the House won't even get around to holding hearings until June, and those hearings promise to be kind of brutal for United and Continental.

What's behind the grumbling? Simply put: the inescapable, undeniable, basic fact that prices will increase as the newly merged airline sheds redundant routes. Surveys show that people are starting to realize that they're in for higher costs, and so Congresspeople have to make a show of being "tough." How much of a difference will all the posturing make? Absolutely none at all.

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Jaunted Interviews / Pilots / Airline Mergers / Continental / United / → All Tags

What a Continental Pilot Told Us Over Drinks in Punta Cana

So something funny happened to us on our brief field trip to Punta Cana, DR this past weekend. A pilot for Continental Airlines bought us a drink in the lobby of the hotel and made with the flirty chit-chat, but soon found this pretty girl only interested in grilling him about his thoughts on the airline industry and the coming merger with United.

He surprisingly knew his stuff in regards to the merger, and it was quite refreshing to see the business through the eyes of one who'll be directly affected by it. So what does a Continental pilot think of everything from the new livery to the safety of his job? Find out, after the jump

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