ATA seeks alliance with other low-cost carriers

ATA Airlines wants to strike an alliance with other low-cost carriers that would allow passengers to book travel on each others’ planes — widening the number of destinations through a single booking.

“ATA intends to look at alliances closely in the next several months to see if the time is right and, if so, with whom,” J. George Mikelsons, chairman and founder of ATA Holdings Corp., said at the company’s annual meeting today.

Following the meeting, Mikelsons said he has proposed the idea to AirTran, Frontier and Southwest Airlines. The latter was not receptive, he said.

“You could buy a ticket on us or the other airline and connect with potentially hundreds more places,” Mikelsons said.

Such an alliance would require the airlines to work out a revenue-sharing agreement. That’s not unprecedented among the larger carriers, such as the Northwest-Continental-Delta alliance.

Mikelsons said airline mergers haven’t worked and he doesn’t see that as the solution.

As a smaller carrier, “We’re OK now while the large carriers restructure. But if we don’t act to regroup ourselves we’re going to be the Jonahs of aviation swallowed by the whale.”

An alliance “is perhaps the only way these (low-cost) carriers can achieve the network scope they need,” said Josh Marks, associate director of the George Washington University Aviation Institute in Ashburn, Va.

Marks said a carrier like ATA, with its hub at Chicago Midway Airport — and Air Tran, with its hub in Atlanta–could feed passengers to each other from opposite areas of the country.

He said alliances between low-cost carriers and international carriers for overseas flights might happen first, with low-cost airlines feeding domestic traffic to the hubs of the transoceanic airlines.

Mikelsons told shareholders he also sees such alliances.

“There’s AirTran in Atlanta, JetBlue at JFK, Frontier in Denver, America West in Phoenix and ATA (at Midway). These are ready-made low-fare hubs waiting to be connected by a trans-Atlantic flight or two or three.

“It won’t be big at first, but it will happen,” Mikelsons said.

http://www.indystar.com/print/articles/5/042466-6615-092.html