Southwest Airlines presses to improve its fortunes in Atlanta by officially de-hubbing in Nov-2013

Southwest Airlines aims to realise its goal of dismantling AirTran's hub in Atlanta in Nov-2013 as a means to bolster local passengers at the airport in the hopes of improving Atlanta's performance. The declaration that Atlanta will officially become a point-to-point operation completes efforts by Southwest to eliminate unprofitable flow-through routes and concentrate on areas where it, along with AirTran, has relative strength.

After completing its acquisition of AirTran in May-2011, Southwest set its sights on network optimisation between the two carriers. The exercise essentially resulted in many small markets being eliminated from AirTran's network and Southwest's determination that Atlanta would perform more effectively in the combined network through the adoption of Southwest's point-to-point route management strategy.