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Getting from A to B, with amenities

By STEVE HUETTEL
Published October 13, 2006

AirTran Airways doesn't have the flash of JetBlue or the heft of Southwest Airlines. But the Orlando-based discounter has grown into the 10th-largest U.S. airline and rings up consistent profits.

Chairman and chief executive Joe Leonard was in the Tampa Bay area Thursday to receive the annual Tony Jannus Award for achievement in commercial aviation. He talked with the Times about the state of the airline business, why AirTran decided to fly into Sarasota and whether international flights are on the horizon.

What do travelers want?

They're looking for economy. They want to get from A to B. They don't want to be abused in the process. And they want to get there with their bags. We try to offer all the business amenities that business fliers like. We have assigned seating. We have the largest overhead bins you can get inside the cabin. And we're the only airline in the U.S. today that can say we have business class in every single flight.

Airlines are starting to make money again, largely because domestic capacity is down and fares are up. Can it continue?

We're in the best supply-demand situation the industry's (seen) in probably seven or eight years. So far, nobody wants to upset the apple cart. Hopefully, people have learned the lesson and won't start adding capacity ahead of demand. We're going to get some help to save us from ourselves because you can't get airplanes. Boeing's sold out. Airbus is sold out. They're going to Asia and they're going to Europe.

AirTran is known for being tight with a buck. How do you keep costs among the lowest in the business?

A lot of it is brand new airplanes. Our average fleet age is less than three years and we continue to bring in new planes at a good clip. New planes are more reliable (and) the maintenance cost is a fraction. We pay very much attention to optimizing the utilization of everything we have. We get 11.3 hours a day aircraft utilization. We just pay a lot of attention to making sure that if we spend money, that it's spent wisely and not just because somebody may think something's a good idea.

Your arch-rival, Delta Air Lines, is working to emerge from bankruptcy with much lower costs. Do you think Delta will be anxious to take on AirTran again?

Delta's going to compete with us as vigorously as they always have. I think they're on their fourth planning guy since we joined the company. And they all walk in saying, "We're going to show the (last) guy how to run AirTran out of business." And we lived through that. They look at the market share gain. We couldn't care less about market share. We plan around profits.

Why does AirTran fly to Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport instead of serving the market from Tampa International like discount giant Southwest Airlines?

Clearly, you can get people who will drive from Sarasota to Tampa. But we believe they're a separate market, and it's big enough we can serve both. Southwest generally will not go into a new city with less than 15 flights a day and they spool that up rapidly. We rarely go with more than two or three flights into a new city. We're much more cautious. We go in with a much more defensive posture rather than an offensive posture.

You received government approval to fly your first routes outside the U.S. - from Tampa and Atlanta to Cozumel in Mexico. Do you plan to start international flights?

We may do that. We never did fly (to Cozumel) because the hurricane came through and wiped out most of the hotels. I doubt we're going to fly it this winter. When you start flying to a foreign country, you've got customs, you've got immigration, you've got currency differences, you've got language differences. So, in keeping with our philosophy of keeping things simple as we possibly can and, therefore, as cost-effective as we can, that's not a high priority for us.

Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3384.

[Last modified October 12, 2006, 23:29:42]