Southwest joins AirTran in offering Atlanta – Los Angeles flights

• With AirTran and Southwest still not having combined their booking systems due to IT integration issues, the two carriers are now “competing” on certain routes. The latest example of this is the launch on 10 June of daily flights between Atlanta (ATL) and Los Angeles (LAX) by the Dallas-based carrier, a route that AirTran already serves with up to four daily flights this summer. Southwest will increase its service to twice-daily from 12 August until the end of October. In addition, Delta operates between 10 and 11 daily flights between the two airports. This brings to eight the number of destinations served non-stop by Southwest under its own name from Atlanta; Austin, Baltimore/Washington, Chicago Midway, Denver and Houston Hobby flights began on 12 February, followed by Las Vegas and Phoenix on 10 March.