If you're tracking the pace of Southwest's absorption of AirTran, you long ago traded in your stopwatch for a calendar. We are pleased to note that we can turn another page.
Southwest recently took over the last of AirTran's service at San Juan and added the final three AirTran cities to the Southwest route map: Memphis; Pensacola, Fla.; and Richmond, Va.
Still to come are AirTran's routes to Mexico and the Caribbean, which will be folded into Southwest, along with some other domestic flying, during 2014.
Southwest closed on its acquisition of AirTran some 30 months ago, in May 2011, making this one of the longest airline integrations on record. Delta, by contrast, acquired Northwest in the third quarter of 2008, and Northwest was gone within two years.
Southwest, of course, has no incentive to hurry and every incentive to get this right, and we applaud the care with which it is proceeding, even if it's losing its reputation as a company that's fast on its feet.