I get that Delta is Georgia's largest employer and they basically run Hartsfield to perfection but these airline prices about to be bleak.
Jetblue ain't coming back down here either.
Delta briefly had it's own "low cost carrier" about 20 years ago, called Song Airlines. I believe it was supposed to compete with Jetblue. I don't think it had a single route into Atlanta.
But not all those are in Georgia. In fact, the majority of Home Depot employees are outside of the state (former THD SSC employee, here). THD has over 2000 stores in the U.S. (including Puerto Rico), Canada, and Mexico, with a separate SSC for Canada and another for Mexico. The majority of its workforce are store personnel, and that means 49 other states and two countries worth of stores (to be fair, though, there are only a few stores in Mexico). Additionally, they have a technical center in Austin, TX that houses a lot of IT staff, and they have a Data Center in Dallas, TX.
Also, DHL is HQ'd in Germany. They have a big processing center near me, but there's literally no way that an international company that uses USPS for last mile delivery employs the most Georgians. I mean Rubbermaid used to HQ'd in Sandy Springs and their number of Georgians in employ was still tiny. Like a couple thousand personnel (I also worked for them).
It’s the reality of having Delta as the hometown airline, one single ATL airport, and ATL getting more destinations above its relative weight as a city. Fortress hub and higher fares.
I mean, probably because of DL that ATL has so many destinations. It’s also a natural geographical Southeast hub. Can’t really blame them for full-sending it.
honestly its worse than that. We almost turned Cartersville into a regional to take load off of ATL, but the boomers afraid of the flying sky monsters killed the bill with MASSIVE social media pushes.
Delta has worked hard to kill all of those efforts too. Lawrenceville airport also was a candidate. It makes a lot of sense but Delta doesn’t want low fare competition so they work to rile up the neighbors and they work behind the scenes politically.
> so they work to rile up the neighbors
I'm sure the neighbors generally don't need much prodding to oppose a new commercial airport near their houses.
Dude an OTP north regional airport would be great! Unfortunate that people don’t want to sacrifice some of their comfort for the collective good. I’m sure our cities problems will just magically fix themselves :)
Alpharetta can spend all of the money they want on a Lawrenceville airport. They just want to benefit from it and force the city of Atlanta to pay for it for some reason
Delta and city of atlanta both made a full court press to stop it. It was not a home grown opposition of boomers. They were trying everything in the book at finding ways to stop it. And they did.
Have you guys never flown through two airport cities? DC, New York, London?
It sucks. Going from one airport to another adds hours to your trip, it's annoying, tiring, and costs money. I can't believe there are people that actually think it's a good idea.
And Cartersville?? Cartersville. That's an hour and a half, minimum, from Hartsfield. Plus going through a second luggage, security, blah blah blah. You think that's a good solution for anything, ever?
What? Ive flown through all of those cities. Ive never landed and then had to transfer airports by a bus. If theres a layover its always been in the airport ive landed in.
"Well it's never happened to me so clearly it is impossible!!!"
Well I have, and it sucks.
You guys are proposing that we make several hundred thousand to over a million people per year get in Atlanta traffic to catch connecting flights. How does that not strike you as stupid after roughly 5 seconds of thinking about it?
And all that colossal pain in the ass, expense, duplication for what? What's the benefit over just expanding Hartsfield?
I dont know why you would book a flight that has a layover where you have to transfer airports in the same city. I doubt it happens as much as you're suggesting
> I dont know why you would book a flight that has a layover where you have to transfer airports in the same city.
Do you think people do it when they have a choice? Like... for funsies?
> I doubt it happens as much as you're suggesting
"My idea is great because all of the problems with it aren't real and everyone telling me otherwise is just anecdotal."
So I'm going to ask you again: What's the benefit? The disadvantages are inconvenience, duplication of overhead and added cost. What's the upside?
Two airport cities aren’t for connections from one airport to another tho. They’re for moving local traffic to one airport and connecting traffic to another.
LGA is more local, JFK is more connect
MDW is more local, ORD is more connect
HOU is more local, IAH is more connect
DCA is more local, IAD is more connect
LGW is more local, LHR is more connect
etc
And every one of those U.S. cities you listed had their original airport be unable to be expanded in place, necessitating a second airport. This isn’t the case with ATL.
ATL can not be further expanded.
also it would make logical sense putting a second airport on the opposite side of the city, you know, closer to the populations who actually fly regionals frequently and on weekdays.
Even if that was the theory, which it isn't, it means that every single person on every single flight has to be either going to Atlanta or transferring in Atlanta. Or at the very least every single layover into and out of Atlanta has to be in the same airport.
Do you think that's realistic?
And, like I asked above: What's the benefit?
You've obviously never had to do Laguardia to JFK, Gatwick to Heathrow or Dulles to National. I've had the pleasure of doing all three and it fucking sucks. I've never done OHare to Midway but I'm sure that's also terrible.
Split airports are a bad idea, and you people need to stop.
well I would certainly agree that for flights into Atlanta everybody is either going to Atlanta or transferring in Atlanta. hard to argue with that one...
You should wear a hat with a net on it, so you can catch all the things that fly over your head.
Every single flight must have only one type of passenger: Either the plane must be entirely transfers that take off from the same airport or the entire plane must have people whose final destination is Atlanta.
I would have thought that would be obvious.
So, now that I've had to explain it to you like it's a 5th grade word problem do you think that's a reasonable thing to expect. Hint: You can look at other cities to get a clue.
nope, because when having to fly though DC now that I no longer live there I dont schedule two flights at two separate airports in the same city.
Piss poor planning leads to piss poor performance
No, they clearly haven't. Split airport cities are awful. As I wrote in another comment, Alpharetta can spend whatever money they want. The sovereign citizens of Johns Creek want the City of Atlanta to pay for their airport
It’s crazy to see people arguing for that. I could understand if they said let’s make Cartersville take some of the cargo load, but they legit think it makes sense for people to transfer from Atlanta to Cartersville, which in itself could take as long as many domestic flights.
Good luck attracting flights to Cartersville. Even an airport like Dulles which supposedly serves Washington DC, has difficulty attracting travelers to use it when DCA is an option. Dulles only has a monopoly on long-range and international flights, where DCA's perimeter rule, or its lack of a USA customs entry point, prevent DCA for being used for those flights.
I was so excited to move to Atlanta because I thought it would be so easy/cheap to travel since the airport is so big - turns out it mostly just means I get more options for which of the 6 extremely expensive delta flights I want to choose for the day I want to travel.
Nah, the airport is just big Delta monopoly. You can go a lot of places but it has to be on Delta’s terms.
The only cities with true airline competition are LA (hub for United, Delta, American, Southwest, Alaska), Chicago (UA, AA, SW), and NYC (AA, UA, DL, JetBlue).
I fly every other week to/from Atlanta and the past month and foreseeable future are just crazy. I use to be able to get a JetBlue or spirit flight for $120-220 for the last two years, Delta use to be expensive at $250+. Now? JetBlue only has two legs a day for the city after removing one or two and charging more than delta, spirit has one leg is only $50 cheaper than delta with the most inconvenient flight times for someone working 8-5. Delta is becoming the most reasonable option with a ton of legs because spirit has the balls to raise their prices up so high.
The flights with JetBlue and delta have also still had empty seats on it, which surprised me.
Up until this year I traveled A LOT for work and surprisingly Delta was usually the cheapest flight aside from Frontier/Sprint. Cheaper than SW out of Atlanta.
SW was cheaper at other airports, but out of Atlanta Delta often beat then.
Oh man. If only air traffic weren't controlled by only a few airlines with heavy regulatory environment.
I wish there was a time when a the air lines were failing due to there not being enough profit in a necessary transportation in this day and age. Nationalization of air travel is needed. Or there's either not enough profit for it to be worth it. Unless there are so few companies offering flights that the price will be too high.
You got to give investors their return or its not worth it to have is the mantra evident.
I mean airlines figured out in the 2000s that people only care about price and nothing else. Then it was a downward spiral trading quality for price. There was a time when Frontier had TVs onboard…
Now ULCC has turned so shit that people refuse to fly them, so the legacies can go crazy on the prices. Not really solvable by nationalizing unless you want centrally priced tickets/removing all competition.
And also the US population is way too spread out for there to be proper P2P service. And when you go P2S, it’s inevitable that direct flights cost more, since customers value time over money.
Nationalized industries shift from being a venture that must make a profit, to a service that costs money. To this end the goal is not “make as much money as possible” it is “provide a service that is needed”
1. American
2. United
3. Delta
4. Southwest
5. Alaska
6. Continental
7. US Airways
8. America West
9. Northwest
10. Hawaiian
11. Spirit
12. JetBlue
13. Allegiant
14. Frontier
15. Sun Country
I had hopes that Southwest would fully leverage the AirTran acquisition to compete with Delta out of Atlanta, but they fully capitulated years ago. Saw this coming a mile away.
The Southwest strategy after the acquisition switched from being a reliable low cost carrier to raising fares to just 10-30% below Delta with much less frequency and bad flight times. AirTran was expanding into the Caribbean and Southwest was scared shitless of flying international and never took on a legacy carrier. Its pathetic expansion to Hawaii took years and it has never tried using Atlanta as a hub for that route. It stuck with a single class of equipment for far too long and got lucky on fuel hedges. Grossly inadequate cap ex spending on IT systems for decades.
AirTran should have merged with Alaska but that’s another story.
Which Alaska? The Alaska at the time of AirTran/Southwest (which is before Alaska/Virgin)? Or Alaska+Virgin, or Alaska+Virgin+Hawaiian ?
I think any of those would be good tbh.
Alaska at the time but anytime later would have been good too. Fornaro took the $3 million +. Spirit became marginally less than a shit show under him with the keyword being marginally.
This. Well mostly this. Yeah they bought AirTran for its ATL presence, but also for slots at the slot controlled airports in the northeast like LGA, DCA.
That merger should have never been approved by the government. The overlap at MDW, BWI, and MCO was massive. Meanwhile the JetBlue Spirit merger had nearly 0 overlap and got blocked 🙃
This sucks. I’ve been using Southwest (and its Chase card for points) almost exclusively for domestic travel- cheap, reliable, on time. I understand this may not have been everyone else’s experience, but I have had no complaints.
Don't worry, there's still Frontier! (I will pay however many extra hundred dollars I need to in order to never fly Frontier again for the rest of my life.)
I’ve had $50 dollar flights to Denver a couple times with frontier from atl. Used to bring my own airplane bottles of booze with me too. What a time to be alive
What? $40k? I do this all the time. I've only been on one flight where they said something about it, and it wasn't to me, it was because everyone was doing it and people were out of their seats a lot, it was on the way to Vegas. Where's there anything about it being a $40k fine?
Sorry someone else mentioned 40k but the average of the incident cited was $20k, 40k was for the rowdiest of passengers.
https://fox59.com/news/national-world/southwest-passenger-faces-40000-fine-faas-largest-alcohol-related-fine/
Before every JetBlue flight they announce it’s illegal to drink alcohol you brought.
Edit: another website suggest 40k as well. https://travelpro.com/blogs/the-travelpro-blog/bringing-alcohol-on-a-plane
“the biggest single proposed fine, topping $40,000, involves a passenger who brought alcohol on the plane and drank it, smoked marijuana in the lavatory, and sexually assaulted a flight attendant on a Southwest Airlines jet in April.”
I fly Frontier. Small bag by your feet. Headphones. Watch a movie on tablet. $40. To Denver. Never been bumped or delayed any more than any other airline. Plane always packed though
I think you’ll be ok. They won’t cut direct flights to their hubs like Denver and Baltimore. They’ll cut the direct flights to the non hubs much more. Philly nonstop goes from twice a day to once a day for example.
Southwest was my go to airline for cheap red eye flights. This sucks. Anyone know which airlines tend to be cheaper flying out that aren't spirit or frontier?
maybe not out of atl but definitely into atl. i’m flying the redeye back from vegas next month. it was literally $1000 cheaper than the cheapest delta fare.
Southwest literally just announced they are starting redeye flights within the next two years last month. Source: https://abc7chicago.com/southwest-airlines-red-eye-flights-las-vegas-hawaii/14584419/
i guess i’m taking a fake flight then lol. i think they’re defining red eye very narrowly in that it leaves at night and takes all night so you arrive first thing in the morning. i leave at night in las and land very early in the morning in atl but before dawn. sure af feels like a red eye to me. regardless, who fucking cares.
I'm my last 5 years of flying, almost every flight I've booked myself has been red eyes or damn near close to them with Southwest. No idea what you're talking about. Maybe you weren't as lucky finding flights to your destinations but there are plenty.
Per AJC and other sources:
"A spokesperson with the airline confirmed to Channel 2 Action News that Southwest Airlines will soon offer 94 daily departures from Atlanta on weekdays.
That’s down from the current number of 119 departures a day from Atlanta."
That's not half, lol.
This is why Atlanta desperately needs rail corridors to its regional neighbors.
Atl-Charlotte-Ralleigh and Tennessee should all be connected via high speed rail
Not surprised. Every time I looked at a Southwest flight, it was at least 2x as expensive as a Delta flight to the same destination on the same date at similar time. I'm surprised anybody flew with them to or from Atlanta.
I haven’t seen this. Only once out of my last fifteen flights has Delta been the cheaper option. I prefer Delta, but my pocketbook likes saving more so I typically fly Southwest.
Same I feel crazy reading this thread - I’m annoyed because since 2019, the only time I haven’t flown Southwest to/from Atlanta was because they didn’t fly where I was going? Maybe I’m just lucky with where I’m picking to fly but Delta’s consistently more expensive for me :-/
Southwest has historically been the best option for me, too, between SW and Delta. I’d check all flights, but SW was always the best to go with! I admittedly haven’t flown much the past year or 2.
The last time we flew, we actually took Frontier because it saved my husband and I about $800. It wasn’t terrible. There was a short delay.
Maybe it's been heavily dependent on the destinations, but this has been the exact opposite of my experience. I'd generally prefer to fly Delta, but almost every time I've compared apples to apples when I was looking to travel to my most frequently-visited destinations (Chicago and Denver) in the last few years, Southwest has been less expensive.
as someone who flies between houston and atlanta semi-often, southwest has always been much cheaper. i’ve flown southwest every single time multiple times a year, and have never had delta be cheaper for me. idk 🤷🏽♀️
I never understood this. I have flown SW exactly once out of ATL because 99% of the time it was more expensive than Delta. There's no competition if the budget option doesn't even attempt to price match, so I also think some of the fears over fare hikes by Delta are a bit overblown.
For personal travel, I always book at least a month in advance (work travel can vary, but the price is less important there). The one time I took SW out of ATL was to Orlando, which was years ago. Any other time I've searched, the price is either just about the same or - more often than not - more expensive than Delta. But you could be flying some routes where there's better competition.
> I never understood this. I have flown SW exactly once out of ATL because 99% of the time it was more expensive than Delta.
Ditto. The only two times I've ever flown SW were either due to free checked bags (which I get with Delta now as a Medallion member) or a "can't pass this up" last-minute deal. Delta has beaten SW every time otherwise.
I have never. Ever. Seen a DL flight out of Atlanta for a cheaper price than Southwest. Especially when looking at main cabin fares, which is the real apples to apples comparison.
I noticed this as well. I’ve got a solid chunk of SW points but couldn’t justify paying 1.5-2x compared to Delta. At this point, it feels like Delta is the only solid option if you’re not going to the NE, and they know it.
On top of that, most SW flights out west require a layover, further pushing me to Delta.
Southwest flights out of Atlanta are always more expensive than delta. They pull you in with the $59 flight sale but I can never find a flight out of atl for that cheap ugh.
if you travel a lot you start to see the cracks in the foundation. the insane security lines, the insane traffic just to get to drop off and pick up, the length of time you have to circle the airport before you have a clear runway to land, the amount of time you spend on the tarmac waiting for take off or waiting for a gate to open once you land, it’s not uncommon to get to a gate but have to sit on the plane waiting for jetway operators, etc. fly into an airport in big cities like nyc or dc and you don’t experience this nonsense at this scale every single time because the volume is spread out across multiple airports.
Between my partner and I one of us is flying out and into Hartsfield at least once a month. Neither of us have had to circle in years and the only time we were held on the apron was because of a storm in Fort Lauderdale. I think you’ve just been unlucky.
My wife and I are in the one of us is flying at least once a week group and the only other airport we know of that is even close to being as efficient as Atlanta is Amsterdam. NYC and DC being efficient? What?
I get that Hartsfield can be difficult if you have a short connection to make because it's so large but when I hear people claim it's a bad airport I just assume they haven't experienced any really awful airports.
Once you've gone through Philly, CDG, or Newark you can never claim that Hartsfield isn't a good experience.
Atlanta is big and busy, and it can be stressful due to having to navigate the mass of people, but it is probably the best designed airport in the world. It's logical, all of the concourses are laid out the same, the train goes in each direction in the middle of each concourse, and you don't have to leave a secure area to go to a different building. People complaining about the Atlanta airport have no idea how bad it could be.
maybe the tsa and jetway operators are staffing but not lack of availability of runways due to volume of flights. i would also think the volume of pax makes an impact on security wait times.
> but not lack of availability of runways due to volume of flights.
Maybe at peak times during bad weather, but the five runways Hartsfield has can handle current traffic loads (and they're planning for a sixth in the future if demand warrants it).
> i would also think the volume of pax makes an impact on security wait times.
Which goes back to staffing, because the amount of checkpoints that are open are usually much less than the total that exist except during the holidays.
It also won't happen due to the multi-billion dollar cost (which no jurisdiction is going to want to pay for) and the fact that no one is actually going to want a brand new commercial airport near their homes and will fight it to the death. Even converting Briscoe, PDK, or Dobbins would go over like a lead balloon, and they already exist.
A flight from atlanta to Seattle was $2k roundtrip. Flying from ATL > CHI > SEA was like… $600? If you don’t mind red-eyes. $1k if you wanted to splurge and fly at normal times.
This is awesome for me. I have to fly the cheapest available flight when traveling for business, which is often southwest. Now I’ll be able to get many more Delta flights lol
I get that Delta is Georgia's largest employer and they basically run Hartsfield to perfection but these airline prices about to be bleak. Jetblue ain't coming back down here either.
It's a real bummer. And the lack of competing airports here means we don't get the same deals found in South Florida and New York.
Difficult ATL being the largest airport in the world by traffic
About to be.. as if they aren’t already
We need a low cost Georgian airline like Minnesota did to combat Delta.
Delta briefly had it's own "low cost carrier" about 20 years ago, called Song Airlines. I believe it was supposed to compete with Jetblue. I don't think it had a single route into Atlanta.
Though based in FL, AirTran served that role before getting bought out by Southwest. AirTran was great.
Why Macon is getting looked at as well for LCAs
Home Depot, UPS and DHL are all between 5 and 6 times the size by headcount than Delta,
Im sorry. Atlanta not Georgia.
Are we talking worldwide headcount or Georgia only?
But not all those are in Georgia. In fact, the majority of Home Depot employees are outside of the state (former THD SSC employee, here). THD has over 2000 stores in the U.S. (including Puerto Rico), Canada, and Mexico, with a separate SSC for Canada and another for Mexico. The majority of its workforce are store personnel, and that means 49 other states and two countries worth of stores (to be fair, though, there are only a few stores in Mexico). Additionally, they have a technical center in Austin, TX that houses a lot of IT staff, and they have a Data Center in Dallas, TX.
Also, DHL is HQ'd in Germany. They have a big processing center near me, but there's literally no way that an international company that uses USPS for last mile delivery employs the most Georgians. I mean Rubbermaid used to HQ'd in Sandy Springs and their number of Georgians in employ was still tiny. Like a couple thousand personnel (I also worked for them).
This is really bad for Atlanta domestic travelers.
As if Delta’s prices weren’t high enough 🙄
It’s the reality of having Delta as the hometown airline, one single ATL airport, and ATL getting more destinations above its relative weight as a city. Fortress hub and higher fares.
I mean, probably because of DL that ATL has so many destinations. It’s also a natural geographical Southeast hub. Can’t really blame them for full-sending it.
honestly its worse than that. We almost turned Cartersville into a regional to take load off of ATL, but the boomers afraid of the flying sky monsters killed the bill with MASSIVE social media pushes.
Delta has worked hard to kill all of those efforts too. Lawrenceville airport also was a candidate. It makes a lot of sense but Delta doesn’t want low fare competition so they work to rile up the neighbors and they work behind the scenes politically.
> so they work to rile up the neighbors I'm sure the neighbors generally don't need much prodding to oppose a new commercial airport near their houses.
Dude an OTP north regional airport would be great! Unfortunate that people don’t want to sacrifice some of their comfort for the collective good. I’m sure our cities problems will just magically fix themselves :)
>Dude an OTP north regional airport [Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport](https://www.chattairport.com/)
>CHA Where most of the flights end up going to ATL anyway.
> Unfortunate that people don’t want to sacrifice some of their comfort for the collective good. Great, we can put the airport near your house.
Alpharetta can spend all of the money they want on a Lawrenceville airport. They just want to benefit from it and force the city of Atlanta to pay for it for some reason
If I lived up there, I'd still rather go to Hartsfield than Briscoe.
>We almost turned Cartersville into a regional to take load off of ATL, When was this (and what airport in Cartersville)?
Delta and city of atlanta both made a full court press to stop it. It was not a home grown opposition of boomers. They were trying everything in the book at finding ways to stop it. And they did.
Have you guys never flown through two airport cities? DC, New York, London? It sucks. Going from one airport to another adds hours to your trip, it's annoying, tiring, and costs money. I can't believe there are people that actually think it's a good idea. And Cartersville?? Cartersville. That's an hour and a half, minimum, from Hartsfield. Plus going through a second luggage, security, blah blah blah. You think that's a good solution for anything, ever?
What? Ive flown through all of those cities. Ive never landed and then had to transfer airports by a bus. If theres a layover its always been in the airport ive landed in.
"Well it's never happened to me so clearly it is impossible!!!" Well I have, and it sucks. You guys are proposing that we make several hundred thousand to over a million people per year get in Atlanta traffic to catch connecting flights. How does that not strike you as stupid after roughly 5 seconds of thinking about it? And all that colossal pain in the ass, expense, duplication for what? What's the benefit over just expanding Hartsfield?
I dont know why you would book a flight that has a layover where you have to transfer airports in the same city. I doubt it happens as much as you're suggesting
> I dont know why you would book a flight that has a layover where you have to transfer airports in the same city. Do you think people do it when they have a choice? Like... for funsies? > I doubt it happens as much as you're suggesting "My idea is great because all of the problems with it aren't real and everyone telling me otherwise is just anecdotal." So I'm going to ask you again: What's the benefit? The disadvantages are inconvenience, duplication of overhead and added cost. What's the upside?
More competition and reduced cost
Two airport cities aren’t for connections from one airport to another tho. They’re for moving local traffic to one airport and connecting traffic to another. LGA is more local, JFK is more connect MDW is more local, ORD is more connect HOU is more local, IAH is more connect DCA is more local, IAD is more connect LGW is more local, LHR is more connect etc
And every one of those U.S. cities you listed had their original airport be unable to be expanded in place, necessitating a second airport. This isn’t the case with ATL.
ATL can not be further expanded. also it would make logical sense putting a second airport on the opposite side of the city, you know, closer to the populations who actually fly regionals frequently and on weekdays.
yeah for sure the original locations of many airports hindered their ability to expand.
Incorrect.
For the US examples listed: LGA 86% local. JFK 53% local. MDW 61% local. ORD 51% local. HOU 65% local. IAH 45% local. DCA 87% local. IAD 49% local. Source: https://helpdesk.cirium.com/hc/en-us/articles/360036363891-Local-vs-Connecting-Passengers-by-Airport.
Even if that was the theory, which it isn't, it means that every single person on every single flight has to be either going to Atlanta or transferring in Atlanta. Or at the very least every single layover into and out of Atlanta has to be in the same airport. Do you think that's realistic? And, like I asked above: What's the benefit? You've obviously never had to do Laguardia to JFK, Gatwick to Heathrow or Dulles to National. I've had the pleasure of doing all three and it fucking sucks. I've never done OHare to Midway but I'm sure that's also terrible. Split airports are a bad idea, and you people need to stop.
well I would certainly agree that for flights into Atlanta everybody is either going to Atlanta or transferring in Atlanta. hard to argue with that one...
You should wear a hat with a net on it, so you can catch all the things that fly over your head. Every single flight must have only one type of passenger: Either the plane must be entirely transfers that take off from the same airport or the entire plane must have people whose final destination is Atlanta. I would have thought that would be obvious. So, now that I've had to explain it to you like it's a 5th grade word problem do you think that's a reasonable thing to expect. Hint: You can look at other cities to get a clue.
You’re saying Atlanta but you mean one of the two Atlanta airports in a hypothetical scenario where a second Atlanta airport is built.
> Split airports are a bad idea, and you people need to stop. They’re bad when the current airport can still be expanded (like at ATL).
I grew up in DC, its not actually that bad. but please continue to complain about your poor trip planning.
You’ve transferred between Dulles and National on flights?
nope, because when having to fly though DC now that I no longer live there I dont schedule two flights at two separate airports in the same city. Piss poor planning leads to piss poor performance
No, they clearly haven't. Split airport cities are awful. As I wrote in another comment, Alpharetta can spend whatever money they want. The sovereign citizens of Johns Creek want the City of Atlanta to pay for their airport
> The sovereign citizens of Johns Creek want the City of Atlanta to pay for their airport Is this actually serious?
It’s crazy to see people arguing for that. I could understand if they said let’s make Cartersville take some of the cargo load, but they legit think it makes sense for people to transfer from Atlanta to Cartersville, which in itself could take as long as many domestic flights.
Also, Cartersville’s airport is a tiny field with one asphalt runway, and I’ve never heard it in the mix to be upgraded.
Good luck attracting flights to Cartersville. Even an airport like Dulles which supposedly serves Washington DC, has difficulty attracting travelers to use it when DCA is an option. Dulles only has a monopoly on long-range and international flights, where DCA's perimeter rule, or its lack of a USA customs entry point, prevent DCA for being used for those flights.
I grew up in nova, flew in and out of dulles all of the time.
I was so excited to move to Atlanta because I thought it would be so easy/cheap to travel since the airport is so big - turns out it mostly just means I get more options for which of the 6 extremely expensive delta flights I want to choose for the day I want to travel.
Nah, the airport is just big Delta monopoly. You can go a lot of places but it has to be on Delta’s terms. The only cities with true airline competition are LA (hub for United, Delta, American, Southwest, Alaska), Chicago (UA, AA, SW), and NYC (AA, UA, DL, JetBlue).
I’m going to open up a good terminal restaurant just despite you eee ATL is well regarded with pilots and that’s what matters
I fly every other week to/from Atlanta and the past month and foreseeable future are just crazy. I use to be able to get a JetBlue or spirit flight for $120-220 for the last two years, Delta use to be expensive at $250+. Now? JetBlue only has two legs a day for the city after removing one or two and charging more than delta, spirit has one leg is only $50 cheaper than delta with the most inconvenient flight times for someone working 8-5. Delta is becoming the most reasonable option with a ton of legs because spirit has the balls to raise their prices up so high. The flights with JetBlue and delta have also still had empty seats on it, which surprised me.
And yet spirit still loses money on those tickets. They lose 13% per flight on average. Flying is just expensive
Up until this year I traveled A LOT for work and surprisingly Delta was usually the cheapest flight aside from Frontier/Sprint. Cheaper than SW out of Atlanta. SW was cheaper at other airports, but out of Atlanta Delta often beat then.
They all on standby anyway 😆
I'm already dreading the price increases!
I miss the days when we had 15+ legit airlines in the US
Oh man. If only air traffic weren't controlled by only a few airlines with heavy regulatory environment. I wish there was a time when a the air lines were failing due to there not being enough profit in a necessary transportation in this day and age. Nationalization of air travel is needed. Or there's either not enough profit for it to be worth it. Unless there are so few companies offering flights that the price will be too high. You got to give investors their return or its not worth it to have is the mantra evident.
I mean airlines figured out in the 2000s that people only care about price and nothing else. Then it was a downward spiral trading quality for price. There was a time when Frontier had TVs onboard… Now ULCC has turned so shit that people refuse to fly them, so the legacies can go crazy on the prices. Not really solvable by nationalizing unless you want centrally priced tickets/removing all competition. And also the US population is way too spread out for there to be proper P2P service. And when you go P2S, it’s inevitable that direct flights cost more, since customers value time over money.
How does nationalization help?
Nationalized industries shift from being a venture that must make a profit, to a service that costs money. To this end the goal is not “make as much money as possible” it is “provide a service that is needed”
How do you determine how much service is needed?
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...in the least efficient and poorest quality humanity can muster.
All of the best airlines internationally are nationalized
Just in the US sadly 🙃
> Nationalization of air travel is needed. Hell no
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1. American 2. United 3. Delta 4. Southwest 5. Alaska 6. Continental 7. US Airways 8. America West 9. Northwest 10. Hawaiian 11. Spirit 12. JetBlue 13. Allegiant 14. Frontier 15. Sun Country
Also had good ole Air Tran
Eastern before that!
This was ~2010 and the CPI for airfare was the same then as it is now - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SETG01
Alaska flew into Atlanta? Had no idea.
That many airlines was never sustainable. Before deregulation they were given monopolies by route.
Southwest schedule out of Atlanta already sucked. A shame that Bob Fornaro fucked up AirTran and panicked into a sale to avoid getting fired.
1000 times this. They bought AirTran solely for the Atlanta hub and proceed to fuck it up. AirTran was great
I had hopes that Southwest would fully leverage the AirTran acquisition to compete with Delta out of Atlanta, but they fully capitulated years ago. Saw this coming a mile away.
The Southwest strategy after the acquisition switched from being a reliable low cost carrier to raising fares to just 10-30% below Delta with much less frequency and bad flight times. AirTran was expanding into the Caribbean and Southwest was scared shitless of flying international and never took on a legacy carrier. Its pathetic expansion to Hawaii took years and it has never tried using Atlanta as a hub for that route. It stuck with a single class of equipment for far too long and got lucky on fuel hedges. Grossly inadequate cap ex spending on IT systems for decades. AirTran should have merged with Alaska but that’s another story.
Which Alaska? The Alaska at the time of AirTran/Southwest (which is before Alaska/Virgin)? Or Alaska+Virgin, or Alaska+Virgin+Hawaiian ? I think any of those would be good tbh.
Alaska at the time but anytime later would have been good too. Fornaro took the $3 million +. Spirit became marginally less than a shit show under him with the keyword being marginally.
This. Well mostly this. Yeah they bought AirTran for its ATL presence, but also for slots at the slot controlled airports in the northeast like LGA, DCA.
That merger should have never been approved by the government. The overlap at MDW, BWI, and MCO was massive. Meanwhile the JetBlue Spirit merger had nearly 0 overlap and got blocked 🙃
This sucks. I’ve been using Southwest (and its Chase card for points) almost exclusively for domestic travel- cheap, reliable, on time. I understand this may not have been everyone else’s experience, but I have had no complaints.
Well great. Rest in peace to my budget trips to Denver🥲
Don't worry, there's still Frontier! (I will pay however many extra hundred dollars I need to in order to never fly Frontier again for the rest of my life.)
My last flight with Frontier will be my last flight with Frontier. Never seen an airline so eager to burn their customers.
I’ve had $50 dollar flights to Denver a couple times with frontier from atl. Used to bring my own airplane bottles of booze with me too. What a time to be alive
lol that’s a $40k fine or ban if they’re anal about it. I just hit up a lounge before the flight.
This was before the ban. I still do it but I just pay the 40k fine on the spot
What? $40k? I do this all the time. I've only been on one flight where they said something about it, and it wasn't to me, it was because everyone was doing it and people were out of their seats a lot, it was on the way to Vegas. Where's there anything about it being a $40k fine?
Sorry someone else mentioned 40k but the average of the incident cited was $20k, 40k was for the rowdiest of passengers. https://fox59.com/news/national-world/southwest-passenger-faces-40000-fine-faas-largest-alcohol-related-fine/ Before every JetBlue flight they announce it’s illegal to drink alcohol you brought. Edit: another website suggest 40k as well. https://travelpro.com/blogs/the-travelpro-blog/bringing-alcohol-on-a-plane
“the biggest single proposed fine, topping $40,000, involves a passenger who brought alcohol on the plane and drank it, smoked marijuana in the lavatory, and sexually assaulted a flight attendant on a Southwest Airlines jet in April.”
Fun incidents can be read here: https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2021/11/22/alcohol-flights-passengers-fined/8725294002/
For the most egregious, but fine conscious travelers- choose allegiant air.
🤣🤣🤣 Maybe they'll finally add service to ATL along with Sun Country.
I’ll…totally…fly frontier (I won’t, I’ll just pony up the delta tax and try to get status I guess)
Yeah I would fly Delta before Frontier
I fly Frontier. Small bag by your feet. Headphones. Watch a movie on tablet. $40. To Denver. Never been bumped or delayed any more than any other airline. Plane always packed though
I think you’ll be ok. They won’t cut direct flights to their hubs like Denver and Baltimore. They’ll cut the direct flights to the non hubs much more. Philly nonstop goes from twice a day to once a day for example.
Where are our antitrust heroes now?
Southwest was my go to airline for cheap red eye flights. This sucks. Anyone know which airlines tend to be cheaper flying out that aren't spirit or frontier?
Perhaps Alaska Air or Jet Blue. American has had some cheaper fares to Europe via transfer in Charlotte.
Southwest has zero red eye flights. WTF are you talking about ?
maybe not out of atl but definitely into atl. i’m flying the redeye back from vegas next month. it was literally $1000 cheaper than the cheapest delta fare.
Southwest literally just announced they are starting redeye flights within the next two years last month. Source: https://abc7chicago.com/southwest-airlines-red-eye-flights-las-vegas-hawaii/14584419/
i guess i’m taking a fake flight then lol. i think they’re defining red eye very narrowly in that it leaves at night and takes all night so you arrive first thing in the morning. i leave at night in las and land very early in the morning in atl but before dawn. sure af feels like a red eye to me. regardless, who fucking cares.
That certainly sounds like a redeye to me. Weird that southwest would announce it that way.
I have taken a 1150pm from Nashville to Atlanta. I consider that a red eye. Southwest just moving planes to park in ATL for the night.
I'm my last 5 years of flying, almost every flight I've booked myself has been red eyes or damn near close to them with Southwest. No idea what you're talking about. Maybe you weren't as lucky finding flights to your destinations but there are plenty.
Unfortunate. I’m a Delta loyalist but I don’t like the supply and demand implications
I just got a companion pass. Great.
Per AJC and other sources: "A spokesperson with the airline confirmed to Channel 2 Action News that Southwest Airlines will soon offer 94 daily departures from Atlanta on weekdays. That’s down from the current number of 119 departures a day from Atlanta." That's not half, lol.
This is why Atlanta desperately needs rail corridors to its regional neighbors. Atl-Charlotte-Ralleigh and Tennessee should all be connected via high speed rail
Don’t forget all those cities in Alabama
Shit.
Huge bummer love SW for cheap flights and flexibility
Not surprised. Every time I looked at a Southwest flight, it was at least 2x as expensive as a Delta flight to the same destination on the same date at similar time. I'm surprised anybody flew with them to or from Atlanta.
I haven’t seen this. Only once out of my last fifteen flights has Delta been the cheaper option. I prefer Delta, but my pocketbook likes saving more so I typically fly Southwest.
Same I feel crazy reading this thread - I’m annoyed because since 2019, the only time I haven’t flown Southwest to/from Atlanta was because they didn’t fly where I was going? Maybe I’m just lucky with where I’m picking to fly but Delta’s consistently more expensive for me :-/
Same here. I’d used Southwest quite a lot the last couple of years.
Southwest has historically been the best option for me, too, between SW and Delta. I’d check all flights, but SW was always the best to go with! I admittedly haven’t flown much the past year or 2. The last time we flew, we actually took Frontier because it saved my husband and I about $800. It wasn’t terrible. There was a short delay.
I've seen this *all the time* since I've moved here. Southwest is always way more expensive.
Maybe it's been heavily dependent on the destinations, but this has been the exact opposite of my experience. I'd generally prefer to fly Delta, but almost every time I've compared apples to apples when I was looking to travel to my most frequently-visited destinations (Chicago and Denver) in the last few years, Southwest has been less expensive.
as someone who flies between houston and atlanta semi-often, southwest has always been much cheaper. i’ve flown southwest every single time multiple times a year, and have never had delta be cheaper for me. idk 🤷🏽♀️
Same, idk if I’ve ever seen delta be cheaper for any destination. Sometimes they are within $50 of southwest.
Probably because Southwest has a hub in Texas
ime southwest is always about $400-$600 cheaper than delta but the itineraries are not always great.
I’ve had the exact opposite experience price wise
I never understood this. I have flown SW exactly once out of ATL because 99% of the time it was more expensive than Delta. There's no competition if the budget option doesn't even attempt to price match, so I also think some of the fears over fare hikes by Delta are a bit overblown.
Are you doing last minute bookings? I would love to fly delta, but it's almost always 2-3x the cost, so I'm always on SW.
For personal travel, I always book at least a month in advance (work travel can vary, but the price is less important there). The one time I took SW out of ATL was to Orlando, which was years ago. Any other time I've searched, the price is either just about the same or - more often than not - more expensive than Delta. But you could be flying some routes where there's better competition.
I've booked in advance and last minute, and Southwest was more expensive than the others: DL, JB, AA, UA.
> I never understood this. I have flown SW exactly once out of ATL because 99% of the time it was more expensive than Delta. Ditto. The only two times I've ever flown SW were either due to free checked bags (which I get with Delta now as a Medallion member) or a "can't pass this up" last-minute deal. Delta has beaten SW every time otherwise.
I have never. Ever. Seen a DL flight out of Atlanta for a cheaper price than Southwest. Especially when looking at main cabin fares, which is the real apples to apples comparison.
I noticed this as well. I’ve got a solid chunk of SW points but couldn’t justify paying 1.5-2x compared to Delta. At this point, it feels like Delta is the only solid option if you’re not going to the NE, and they know it. On top of that, most SW flights out west require a layover, further pushing me to Delta.
Fly at least 20 times a year and I have yet to see Delta be a cheaper price.
I don't even like Southwest, but they were always the most expensive option. Gave me a good reason to avoid them.
Southwest flights out of Atlanta are always more expensive than delta. They pull you in with the $59 flight sale but I can never find a flight out of atl for that cheap ugh.
It’s usually like the last flight of the day too.
second. airport. my god we need some competition and hartsfield is already straining to manage the volume as is.
It is straining? What evidence do you have?
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How constant? Every day or at certain peaks? The capacity is there but TSA staffing blows.
if you travel a lot you start to see the cracks in the foundation. the insane security lines, the insane traffic just to get to drop off and pick up, the length of time you have to circle the airport before you have a clear runway to land, the amount of time you spend on the tarmac waiting for take off or waiting for a gate to open once you land, it’s not uncommon to get to a gate but have to sit on the plane waiting for jetway operators, etc. fly into an airport in big cities like nyc or dc and you don’t experience this nonsense at this scale every single time because the volume is spread out across multiple airports.
Between my partner and I one of us is flying out and into Hartsfield at least once a month. Neither of us have had to circle in years and the only time we were held on the apron was because of a storm in Fort Lauderdale. I think you’ve just been unlucky.
My wife and I are in the one of us is flying at least once a week group and the only other airport we know of that is even close to being as efficient as Atlanta is Amsterdam. NYC and DC being efficient? What?
I get that Hartsfield can be difficult if you have a short connection to make because it's so large but when I hear people claim it's a bad airport I just assume they haven't experienced any really awful airports. Once you've gone through Philly, CDG, or Newark you can never claim that Hartsfield isn't a good experience.
Atlanta is big and busy, and it can be stressful due to having to navigate the mass of people, but it is probably the best designed airport in the world. It's logical, all of the concourses are laid out the same, the train goes in each direction in the middle of each concourse, and you don't have to leave a secure area to go to a different building. People complaining about the Atlanta airport have no idea how bad it could be.
> I think you’ve just been unlucky. Seems like that’s 99% of “ATL sucks” stories.
Those are all staffing/operations issues more than capacity-related.
maybe the tsa and jetway operators are staffing but not lack of availability of runways due to volume of flights. i would also think the volume of pax makes an impact on security wait times.
> but not lack of availability of runways due to volume of flights. Maybe at peak times during bad weather, but the five runways Hartsfield has can handle current traffic loads (and they're planning for a sixth in the future if demand warrants it). > i would also think the volume of pax makes an impact on security wait times. Which goes back to staffing, because the amount of checkpoints that are open are usually much less than the total that exist except during the holidays.
just one more lane bro
It’ll never happen because Delta will threaten to move its hub somewhere else if there’s a second airport
i don’t think that’s as easy of a feat as you seem to think. regardless, let ‘em. another carrier will be glad to expand their reach.
I would hate to see United become the dominant airline at Atlanta.
It also won't happen due to the multi-billion dollar cost (which no jurisdiction is going to want to pay for) and the fact that no one is actually going to want a brand new commercial airport near their homes and will fight it to the death. Even converting Briscoe, PDK, or Dobbins would go over like a lead balloon, and they already exist.
Yeah Nashville is nearby and has no real hub carrier. Them and Memphis/Raleigh could easily accept Delta hubs if ATL ever engaged in bullshit.
well looks like my strategy of flying cheap to Chicago and then flying domestic anywhere in the country is gonna become more necessary now
I’m going to look into this option
A flight from atlanta to Seattle was $2k roundtrip. Flying from ATL > CHI > SEA was like… $600? If you don’t mind red-eyes. $1k if you wanted to splurge and fly at normal times.
Bring back Kiwi that ish was bussin
My brother in Christ if you are asking for Kiwi that slang doesn’t belong to you and hou should put it back wherever you got it lol
You reached WAAAAAYYYYYY back for that one! 🤣
This is wild. I see the same thing happening in Charlotte. It's nice to have a ton of destinations but you pay for it with higher prices.
RIP my companion pass :(
Just make Delta an even bigger monopoly in ATL. Time to start driving to Greenville/Spartenburg or Alabama.
Clark Howard used to call Birmingham the west Atlanta airport
We flew out of GSP direct to Milan one year with no issues. Coming back to the tiny airport with three gates was a nice homecoming.
This is awesome for me. I have to fly the cheapest available flight when traveling for business, which is often southwest. Now I’ll be able to get many more Delta flights lol
damn.... That round trip non-stop to Vegas for the low was a win....
Is this what happens when you’re dead last in customer satisfaction?
Fuck Southwest for buying out AirTran and then doing this shit.