Is AirTran a good airline?

[dsnymomof4]

We've flown Airtran on 3 trips and have never had a problem. This past trip we were in a brand new plane. I do agree with the problem of flight times changing - this past trip ours changed more than an hour. You just have to keep checking it and make sure you call CRO to update your times. Also, you can go online and pick your seats 24 hours before your scheduled departure time. The BW CM was able to do this for our return trip as well.

 

[stacy2197]

Thank for posting this it is answering many of my questions. Do you know if the non stop flights are less likely to get changed. Thanks

 

[dsnymomof4]

We've only ever flown non-stop from Philadelphia to Florida and our flight times almost always have changed - first they went up 30 minutes, then another 20 minutes, etc. So, my advice is to plan that they might change by about an hour (always later in my experience) and just keep checking back until the day of your flight. Just make sure to update Disney on your flight information if you are using ME.

 

[ameraumi]

So how far in advace do they start changing flight times? Right now we are scheduled to leave 7:50 am on 4/2. I guess I'll start keeping a eye out on our flight.

 

[glass slipper girl]

I've been happy with them! If you get a TA to purchase your tickets for you, they can assign seats at the time of purchase so to the poster whose AAA agent booked them, no it isn't a mistatke. I also like their deal where you can upgrade to business class for $35 (more out of other cities but from Atlanta everywhere I've flown it's been $35) per seat if there are business class seats available they day you fly. That $140 proved to be SO worth it for us on our most recent trip when our "almost 6" year old cause a stir at security that delayed us (long story about his treatment by TSA agents and them not allowing us to be with him while he was terrified and waiting to be "Searched" but ends with he had a hot wheels car in his pocket that we didn't know about ). We were quite thankful that this had happened after going through the first/business class security line which was like 1/8th the length of the regular line or we wouldn't have made our flight!

I have a good friend who travels every week for work and flies them 90% of the time. He said his experience is that if you are on the first 2 flights of the day they don't mess around with them. If you must fly late or midday, try to find a flight where they have one going at say 4:00 and another at 4:20. That means that it's a popular time and if anything they may just combine those flights and it doesn't affect you by much. So far we've been lucky and not had a problem. Our only delay has been out of Orlando this December and that was weather related as the plane we were to leave on had not arrived from somewhere up North where it had been delayed by all the snow. We waited maybe 40 minutes. Once it came in, they were REALLY efficient in turning it around for us to get on.

 

[grammagail]

Yeah - I was just able to book a RT non-stop from Detroit-Orlando for $227 pp. for 2/23 - 2/28/06.

Me (gramma), 5 yo grandson and daughter going back - cannot wait. Grandson doesn't know he's going yet.

I missed out on a spirit flight last week for $194........didn't know if daughter could reschedule a mid-term test. Now - Spirit wants $333 for this flight

 

[allboyz]

I saw a $99 airfare for Airtan but did not book right away because I was concerned about being able to get seats next to my daughter (7) if I couldn't pick seats until check-in. I sent off an email and they responded back they would be happy to assign my seats. Well, I went back to the website and all tickets for those prices were gone, so I sent an email thanking her for the offer but the prices were back up to $341 so I wasn't going to purchase them. She went out of her way and got me the airfare for the $99 and assigned our seats for the whole round-trip travel. I may have been lucky and just got a nice employee or they may all be that way. After having to deal with Northwest Airlines for years it is nice to see some real customer service.

They were nice to me one time too. We were going to drive a distance to catch a flight because it was A LOT CHEAPER! Anyway, the flights out of our city dropped suddenly. So I called and explained that. They allowed me to change FIVE roundtrip tickets for $50. They were supposed to charge me $50 for each change or something.