AirTran -vs- Southwest Airlines

[Marker]

I have flown Southwest many times but have never flown on AirTran.

How do they compare?

- Leg Room/Seat Size,
- Online Check-In
- Boarding/Bumping
- anything else

Thanks in advance.

[maxrebo77]

Air Tran keeps changing my flight for this year, always taking away from vacation time. Will never use them again.:mad:

[wdwnomad]

I haven't flown Southwest but I have flown AirTran many times to MCO. Both fly out of PHL where I am. Their prices, at least in the past, have always been the same which was always my first consideration. You can get credits from both airlines if you book and the flight later goes down in price. I've done that twice with AirTran. I've used those credits to prepurchase seats on the flights. I won't have to check-in at exactly the 24 hour mark now with that and hope for an 'A' boarding pass as with Southwest. AirTran does have a habit of moving their flights around but Southwest does not. However, everytime they have moved them I have been able to switch them to another flight no problems. Since AirTran offers multiple daily flights out of PHL this is never really a big deal for me. If your airport has only one daily flight then I would definetly take that into consideration. So for me they are pretty much equal. The reason I always end up going with AirTran is because they are a participating airline with Resort Airline Check-in. Checking in your bags at the resort instead of lugging them around the airport is a huge plus in my book.

One thing that I am going to have to consider for next year are bag fees. Southwest still lets you check two free of charge per person. AirTran only does one per person.

[JenniferS.]

I've always flown Southwest and this year we decided to go AirTran and it was a BIG mistake. We have to drive about an hour to get to Logan airport and our flight times have changed twice. Originally, we were departing at 8:51 am, then it changed to 7:15 am non-stop and now they cancelled the non-stop flight all together and we are leaving at 6:30 am w/ a stop in Baltimore. UGh..We have 3 kids under the age of 5 and it is a big inconvience for us. It may even change again...our trip is 57 days away. Our flight homw was originally 1:55, then was changed to 1:40, and now it is 5:15 pm. We will arrive in Boston at 8:12 pm and then we have an hour ride home. I will never fly AirTran again.

[wetoofun]

We have flown Southwest on 3 occasions out of Philadelphia and never had a problem. We took Air Tran to Las Vegas one year and remember the flight was resceduled to later in the day.

[Tigger&Stitch]

I've never flown Airtran, so can't help you there. I can tell you that I trust Southwest more than the other big airlines, though.

For all the nitty gritty details, check out a website called SeatGuru (.com) It has an extensive list of airlines, the planes they fly, and notes about seat pitch, etc.