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“Our people have been through some bad times. We’ve
almost gone out of business a few times, but we have
a group that won’t give up regardless of the obstacles.
Their spirit and dedication,” says Leonard, makes a “big,
big difference [in the flying experience].”
AirTran has been growing at the rate of 20 to 25 percent
for the last five years, but Leonard says it’s time to slow
things down. “We’ve decided to slow our growth rate
and have  discussed with Boeing a stretch out of our
deliveries, so we’ll be taking about 12 to 15 airplanes
a year, which will give us a growth rate in the 10 to 12
percent range – still aggressive, but not at the same level
we’ve seen for the past five years.” All the new additions
will be the 137-passenger Boeing 737-700s.
The addition of these new aircraft
also helps with another issue facing
airline executives today, the high
cost of fuel. “By having all brand
new airplanes, by definition we
have the most fuel-efficient
technology available today,”
said Leonard. He notes that
the new technology
also results in noise
reduction and
that the difference
in noise level
between the old
737 and the
newer version
operated by
AirTran is
significant.
Other energy conservation measures include winglets,
ver tical extensions of the wings that help with
aerodynamics and over time result in significant fuel
savings. “We’ve also invested a lot of money in Atlanta,
Orlando, and Baltimore to put air-conditioning units at
all the gates, so that we don’t have to run the aircraft
cooling systems when the airplane is parked,” said
Leonard. “In addition, we’ve put power units at every
one of our maintenance stations so that our crews
don’t have to run the airplanes at night when doing
maintenance work.” Leonard also said that AirTran pilots
taxi to and from the gate on one engine to save fuel,
and that “we try to make sure our planes can roll right
up to the gate without stopping. That saves 100 pounds
of fuel, believe it or not.”
With all its success as a domestic carrier, will AirTran
venture into the potentially more lucrative international
marketplace? Says Leonard,
“For the foreseeable future
we plan to remain a domestic airline. At some point
Canada and Mexico will make a lot of sense – maybe
even the Caribbean and Central America.We have
the airplane [the 737] to go international if we want
to.”
However, Leonard is quick to note that one of the
tenets at AirTran is that “we try to keep everything as
simple as we possibly can.
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