Southwest Airlines in September took over corporate sales
functions from AirTran, but it could take years for the company to fully
incorporate both carriers into preferred corporate airline agreements, a
Southwest official said last week. Ultimately, both sales and distribution at
AirTran are expected to follow the Southwest model.
"That integration process will follow the timeline that
the company has set," director of sales and distribution marketing Rob
Brown told The Beat. CEO Gary Kelly
has said integration efforts would be ongoing until 2015.
In sales and distribution, "the Southwest strategy
continues to be the strategy that we're going for," Brown said. Southwest
has assumed "the responsibility of selling and representing both
brands" and is "putting together preferred carrier agreements for
both brands." With that, AirTran's corporate sales team "transitioned
out," though Southwest "added a total of three sales managers from
the AirTran sales team," according to Brown. Southwest announced last week
that the carriers received FAA approval for a single operating certificate.
"The process of a full integration of the AirTran Airways fleet into the
Southwest Airlines fleet (i.e., paint scheme and interior configuration) is not
complete and the transition to a single ticketing system is a large and complex
process that will take several years to complete," according to the
company.
In contrast to Southwest's more limited distribution,
AirTran still provides "full content" through global distribution
systems and continues to operate its own aircraft and brand. AirTran has not
adopted its parent's no-bag-or-change-fee ethos. But Southwest plans to erase
those distinctions in the next few years, and already has begun to make over
AirTran in its own image.
Among nearer-term integration targets, Southwest this year
plans to "launch travel booking tools to allow customers of both Southwest
and AirTran to book flights on either carrier using either southwest.com or
airtran.com," according to a February U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission filing.
Brown, however, was unsure when those capabilities would
come to Southwest's corporate booking portal, Swabiz. Kelly last year noted it
could take it until mid-year 2012 before AirTran and Southwest could implement
a code share.
Although Southwest last month re-upped its agreement with
Sabre for continued use of its SaaS reservations system "to help support
the AirTran integration," Southwest has not abandoned a larger
"multi-year project" to fully replace its reservations system.
As for AirTran's corporate booking portal, "A2B is
still a program that is available in the marketplace," Brown said.
"Eventually all the different portals from an online perspective will come
under the Southwest brand, whether it's Southwest.com or Swabiz.com. But we
will keep both in place as long as there's an AirTran brand in the
marketplace."
It's not clear how long Southwest will support AirTran's
level of GDS involvement. AirTran's agreement with Sabre was set to expire last
year, but "AirTran has renewed its distribution agreement with us," a
Sabre spokeswoman said last week. She would not disclose when that agreement
was signed or when the terms expire. AirTran's agreement with Travelport
"continues to be fully effective without any changes or modifications,"
according to Travelport, which did not comment on the terms of that agreement.
"For right now," Brown said, "we want to
continue to honor the distribution strategy that AirTran had in place and at
the same time honor the relationships that Southwest has in place. That's the
short-term plan from a distribution perspective. Long-term, we'll continue to
look for ways as one group, one entity and one company to provide our content
through the channels in which our preferred customers are looking to have that
content. We'll look for ways, as we have over the past four or five years on
the Southwest side, to continue to expand our distribution portfolio where it
makes sense." As one recent example, Egencia signed an agreement with Southwest to enable mutual clients later this year to book and manage
the carrier's content.
This report originally was published in The Beat.