Northwest Versus Southwest

[dr_phil_physics]

Finally

For over 10 years the people at the Gerald R. Ford International Airport (GRR) in Grand Rapids MI have been trying to get powerhouse discount airline Southwest to come here. Grand Rapidians would be well suited to both the low fares and Southwest's successful quirky operations. Alas, Southwest wouldn't budge, and one has to travel to either Detroit or Midway in Chicago to fly Southwest. For a number of years, GRR had no discount airlines and the fares charged by Northwest, United, American, Continental, Delta, etc. showed. Since Air Tran and Allegiant (and Frontier) have come to GRR in the last year or so, fares have gotten more competitive. The jury is out as to whether the Delta-Northwest merger helped or hurt.


But... yesterday it was announced that Southwest was going to acquire Air Tran in a $1.4 billion deal. A look at the two airlines' maps shows that though there is some overlap, Air Tran would add a lot of eastern cities to Southwest -- including Grand Rapids and Flint MI, Charlotte NC and Atlanta GA. Yay! Southwest is coming to Grand Rapids!

Don't know the dates, but this should be interesting. Stay tuned.

Dr. Phil

Comments

[wendyb-09.livejournal.com]

Saturday night I was watching college football with a friend on one of the local ABC channels. All night long Southwest Airlines ran ads. Now, since the game we were watching was Oregon State v Boise State, we even commented on how weird it was for Southwest to be advertising during this time slot. The only thing we could think of was they were playing to the larger national sports audience.

THE next day Atlanta got the first hint of the upcoming merger. Explained much.

And on another note - Hit preview for spell check and before directing me back to make corrections, LJ popped up an ad for some new tv show, and then the comment screen froze...had to go back to the original post and start over. Not playing nice today...

[dr-phil-physics.livejournal.com]

Yeah, a couple of years ago we had a run with a bunch of TV ads locally for a burger chain which wasn't in our area. Turned out it was saturation bombing because they WERE moving into the area. (grin) Create the market, then make it available.

Dr. Phil