atafan
Well-known member
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2003
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Buoyed by Southwest, ATA expands to Hawaii and looks outside USA
Expanded service to Hawaii and a codesharing pact with Southwest are helping to stabilize ATA Airlines eighteen months after it exited bankruptcy, Travel Weekly (free registration) reports. Hawaii has been at the forefront of ATA's growth over the past year-and-a-half, with the carrier now flying to the state from more mainland destinations (five) than any other carrier. In June, ATA began flying to Hawaii from both Oakland and Las Vegas, adding to its existing Hawaii routes from Los Angeles, Phoenix and Ontario, Calif. Josef Loew, ATA's vice president for scheduled services, tells Travel Weekly about two-thirds of the airline's available seats will be to Hawaii by September.
Helping drive ATA's Hawaii business is the airline's 7-year business pact with Southwest. Travel Weekly says "the agreement goes well beyond simple codesharing. As part of the agreement, ATA transferred its Bay Area operations from San Francisco to Oakland, where Southwest has a well-established presence. ATA now schedules its flights to provide Hawaii service for incoming Southwest passengers at Oakland." Loew says, "selecting Hawaii for a major expansion was a reorientation of our strategy."
As for the alliance with Southwest, Loew says it "effectively opens the whole Southwest and Midwest to us, making it more convenient to get to Hawaii from a wide range of new feeder markets. There is a large niche market that we are aiming to fill, with price, convenience and service focused on customer satisfaction." So far, Loew says Hawaii is paying off. "Our new Hawaii flights out of Oakland have been amazingly full. I'm actually surprised at how much demand there was. It confirmed our belief that we could put a fare out that would make us a reasonable profit and would sell well," he says. Mexico, Caribbean and even Canada could be next. "I hope that by 2009, we'll be ready to go international with Southwest," Loew says.
Photo by Michael Conroy, AP.
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This is the direction SWA is taking to go international, not buying AirTran or anyone else. I've been told that Herb help negotiate the World deal and once SWA gets their computer system up to speed SWA will have the reach to touch anywhere they want to.
IMHO
Expanded service to Hawaii and a codesharing pact with Southwest are helping to stabilize ATA Airlines eighteen months after it exited bankruptcy, Travel Weekly (free registration) reports. Hawaii has been at the forefront of ATA's growth over the past year-and-a-half, with the carrier now flying to the state from more mainland destinations (five) than any other carrier. In June, ATA began flying to Hawaii from both Oakland and Las Vegas, adding to its existing Hawaii routes from Los Angeles, Phoenix and Ontario, Calif. Josef Loew, ATA's vice president for scheduled services, tells Travel Weekly about two-thirds of the airline's available seats will be to Hawaii by September. Helping drive ATA's Hawaii business is the airline's 7-year business pact with Southwest. Travel Weekly says "the agreement goes well beyond simple codesharing. As part of the agreement, ATA transferred its Bay Area operations from San Francisco to Oakland, where Southwest has a well-established presence. ATA now schedules its flights to provide Hawaii service for incoming Southwest passengers at Oakland." Loew says, "selecting Hawaii for a major expansion was a reorientation of our strategy."
As for the alliance with Southwest, Loew says it "effectively opens the whole Southwest and Midwest to us, making it more convenient to get to Hawaii from a wide range of new feeder markets. There is a large niche market that we are aiming to fill, with price, convenience and service focused on customer satisfaction." So far, Loew says Hawaii is paying off. "Our new Hawaii flights out of Oakland have been amazingly full. I'm actually surprised at how much demand there was. It confirmed our belief that we could put a fare out that would make us a reasonable profit and would sell well," he says. Mexico, Caribbean and even Canada could be next. "I hope that by 2009, we'll be ready to go international with Southwest," Loew says.
Photo by Michael Conroy, AP.
*******************************************
This is the direction SWA is taking to go international, not buying AirTran or anyone else. I've been told that Herb help negotiate the World deal and once SWA gets their computer system up to speed SWA will have the reach to touch anywhere they want to.
IMHO
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