The End of AirTran, but More Southwest Points!

As you are all probably aware, AirTran and Southwest pretty much completed their merger on November 1, 2014. While there are some passengers that still have flights booked through AirTran through December 28th, for all intents and purposes, AirTran no longer exists.

I wrote about this a bunch last week as there were MANY tricks and loopholes by utilizing AirTran’s loyalty program to maximize your Southwest points! One of the tricks involved a way to transform your Southwest credits and standard award tickets to Southwest points. The trick involved transferring your credits/awards to AirTran and let them sit there for a few days. AirTran said that on November 4th, they would manually transfer all A+ credits to Southwest points with a conversion of 1 A+ credit = 1,200 Southwest point. This means if you had a one-way standard award it would result in 9,200 Southwest points.

Well, today is November 4th and sure enough all credits were in fact transferred over! I checked three different family members accounts and see that the credits transferred for all accounts. So if you were taking advantage of this trick, or simply just had credits in your AirTran account from flying AirTran, I suggest checking your Southwest account to ensure the points transferred over.

If you were a loyal AirTran member and did not have a Southwest account, a Southwest account will be created for you. You most likely will be receiving an email with your Southwest number, but you can always call Southwest to inquire.

Overall, I transformed most of my standard award tickets to points, but did leave a few with a October 31, 2015 expiration date. Since standard award tickets expire, I did not want to be stuck not being able to use it.

I guess this is the end of AirTran! I cannot say I am too sad, but I am sad that these great tricks and loopholes are over. Although, they were great while they lasted!