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Airlines
Silverjet - airline information
General information
AirTran is a leading US-based low cost carrier established in 1993, serving primarily the Eastern and Midwest United States. At the time of its launch, the company wore the name Conquest Sun Airlines. In 1994, the name was swapped with AirTran Airways. Interestingly the company based in Orlando has its main hub quite far away at Atlanta's International Airport from where it operates over 200 daily departures. AirTran has a total of 700 daily departures. AirTran provides low fare services to both the economic and business segments.
Fact sheet
Destinations
52 destinations are served by the over 10 dozen aircraft fleet of AirTran. Except major cities, like Dallas, Orlando, Washington D.C., Atlanta, etc., AirTran serves many medium to small cities, installing itself into many of the regional markets. Among the most important such spots are the cities (and regions around) Akron, Portland, Charlotte, Jackson, etc. Tampa, Fort Lauderdale and many Caribbean destinations (such as the popular Mexican vacation city of Cancún) represent the leisure segment, of which AirTran also takes account of. Especially during the summer, these routes are very profitable. AirTran is planning to expand further by adding more destinations to its list,
Frequent flyer program
AirTran's A+ Rewards is compatible with that of Frontier Airlines, called Early Returns. If you accumulated miles on one carrier, you can sue them with the other.
Activity & market position
The market segments served by AirTran
The company operates mostly on the Eastern part of the USA, aiming at the economic travelers and the business travelers as well. AirTran flies to popular Caribbean travel destinations, exploiting the intense flux of US tourists to the area. The destinations served by this airline are rather small and medium cities. They seem to attribute more importance to interconnecting small regional markets than aiming for the big ones (like JetBlue does, for instance). This is the reason why AirTran has set up so many hubs, most of them in the Southeastern United States. AirTran is one of the very few airlines that doesn't have its main hub at its headquarter-airport. AirTran is based in Orlando, where it also has a hub, but it operates primarily from its main hub at Atlanta's International Airport. The latter one is one of the World's biggest airports with many possibilities for connection. Therefore, AirTran has installed itself there, grabbing a large portion of the clients that would anyway roam at Atlanta's airport, where a major carrier, Delta is also based. AirTran has recently installed screens on the back of every seat on its planes, improving the in-flight entertainment services. Food is not free, one has to pay for it, but smaller amounts of snacks are handed out for free. It's similar to what JetBlue does. AirTran's strategies have worked out well and the company is looking towards a bright future. AirTran is officially a low cost airline, but lately it strongly started shifting towards the hybrid airline category, due to the introduction of the business class, the fact that they offer small amount of free snacks, also because they have a frequent flyer program and have installed screens on the back of every seat.
Merger with ValuJet
In 1997, AirTran has merged with another low fare carrier, ValuJet. The latter one had its reputation heavily damaged after one of its planes crashed due to technical problems. ValuJet lost many clients and due to the bad image. The company was suspected to make economies on the maintenance of its airplanes. Travelers concluded that their fares were low because they didn't spend enough on maintaining the aircraft in good conditions. Nevertheless, ValuJet's future would have been doomed had it not merged with AirTran in 1997 in order to relaunch itself under the latter brand. The merger was one of the very few so-called reverse mergers in the USA.
Partnership with Frontier Airlines
AirTran has teamed up with Frontier Airlines, meaning that they refer clients to each other and they have also connected their frequent flyer programs. Travelers can accumulate miles on both airlines and use them with the other one.
Fleet
AirTran uses Boeing 717s and 737s only and it has one of the youngest fleets in the World, the average age of the aircraft being just above 4 years.
Last modified/updated: July 5, 2007
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