Southwest Airlines Closes AirTran Deal

By WYDaily Staff Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Southwest Airlines completed its $1 billion dollar purchase of Air Tran Monday, with Southwest crews on hand to celebrate at Newport News-Williamsburg International Airport.

Southwest employees greeted passengers as well as AirTran pilots and flight attendants just after the announcement the deal had been closed.

What this means to routes that fly into and out of Newport News is not clear. Monday's off-the-cuff assessments by Southwest officials on the fate of a particular route - one said it would be eliminated, another assured the route was an asset - clarified only that if decisions have been made about routes they haven't been widely shared.

The purchase will take some time to fully integrate the two airlines, but travelers will see Air Tran planes getting the Southwest paint job probably at the beginning of 2012.

For now, according to a statement from Southwest announcing the finalized purchase, "it's business as usual."

Currently, Southwest operates flights out of Norfolk International Airport and AirTran has routes from Richmond International and Newport News/Williamsburg International.

According to a Southwest statement, they'll update customers throughout the transition to a single carrier with posts on their websites: southwest.com, airtran.com and lowfaresfarther.com.