New routes being added for Southwest, Airtran

A Southwest Airlines jet takes off from McCarran International Airport on Friday, Aug. 26, 2011.

Southwest Airlines is adding new routes for Southwest and its AirTran subsidiary and has announced more cities where it will remove AirTran service.

The new service, which will begin in May, doesn’t include any new nonstop flights to and from McCarran International Airport. But because Southwest is McCarran’s busiest carrier and AirTran has some flights here, it means travelers will have new options to reach some destinations.

Southwest and AirTran are in the process of integrating their systems following Southwest’s acquisition of AirTran earlier this year.

The airlines began selling tickets on their websites Monday.

Beginning May 24, AirTran will offer nonstop flights between Fort Lauderdale and San Juan, Puerto Rico, and starting June 3, it will begin new service between Denver and Akron-Canton and Dayton, Ohio, and New York’s LaGuardia Airport.

Because the systems aren’t yet integrated, it means travelers still can’t purchase tickets, for example, from Las Vegas to Dayton via Denver. The AirTran website only offers a routing from Las Vegas to Dayton through Atlanta.

AirTran also added routes between Baltimore-Washington International Airport to Los Angeles, New Orleans, Seattle and San Francisco.

Beginning June 3, Southwest also will offer new round-trip flights between Houston and Kansas City, Seattle and Raleigh-Durham, N.C., as well as a new round trip between Chicago’s Midway Airport and Oklahoma City. Those new routes give Las Vegans an option of flying to and from Raleigh-Durham via Houston.

Beginning in June, AirTran will be discontinuing services to five more cities. Scratched from the AirTran map will be Bloomington-Normal, Ill.; Charleston, W.Va; Knoxville, Tenn.; Miami; and Washington’s Dulles International Airport. The company earlier announced it was eliminating flights to Atlantic City; Ashville, N.C.; Newport News, Va.; Moline-Quad Cities, Ill.; and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport.

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