air tran opinions?

[pixi]

Does anyone know anything about this airline? I have been checking airfares & they have a direct flight out of Philly to Orlando at a pretty decent fare.
They state that seats won't be assigned until you check in, which worries me, but other than that, the rules seem ok.
Let me know what you guys think!
thanks!
Rhonda

[PhillyPooh]

Hi Rhonda. We have flown AirTran out of Philly before and we were very pleased with their service. Their flight attendants are very nice and don't worry about not having seat assignments. They really do everything they can to assign seats so families are sitting together. The only reason we choose US Air this time is because we had more options on flight times and the price was the same as AirTran.

[MargaretJ]

pixi I have never flown Air Tran I am a Delta girl but they are quite large in Atlanta & certainly give Delta a run for their money. Air Tran has a large following & I believe as long as you get there early for checkin you can pretty much sit together. Air Tran used to be called Value Jet.

[AliKat]

We have flown airtran the past, I don't know, 5 trips to WDW. We really like the airline. In fact, we just had a very good experience with them the other day. We needed to change our flights back a week, and they had an option online to do so--you just have to pay the difference plus $50 a person. We followed all the online instructions, but it didn't work, and we were charged and extra flight. Called the next A.M. and the fixed everything (and didn't charge us the $50 a person... hehehe). The prices are great for us and they have good flights out of CAK. We would recommend using Airtran.

[WillCAD]

I've only flown ATA once (in Sept 2002), but I was pleased with the condition of the plane, the friendliness of the flight crew and check-in people, and and the price. ATA tends to be within a buck or two of Southwest's price, so they're pretty cheap, and they are the only carrier in BWI other than SWA that has non-stop flights to MCO.

When I flew ATA, they were in the process of a 3 or 4 year plan to replace their entire fleet with brand-new aircraft, so today if you fly ATA you have a pretty fair chance of getting an aircraft that's less than 3 years old, which makes them more reliable (less breakdowns means fewer delays), and more comfortable. Both of my flights in Sept 02 were on nearly-new aircraft, and they were quiet, clean, and ran well.

My return flight was delayed for mechanical difficulties. We sat around for about 45 minutes while the mechanics tried to fix the plane, but eventually the wound up taking the plane out of service and giving us a new aircraft for our flight. The pilot of this aircraft increased our cruising speed, which used more fuel but got us into Baltimore 30 minutes faster than the normal flight time, so we weren't as late as we had anticipated.

I'd fly ATA again without hesitation.

[LisaS]

Actually, it's a common mistake, but Air Tran and ATA are two different airlines - Air Tran used to be ValuJet - this was a reliable airline, but had a tragic accident in Florida - ultimately it reemerged as Air Tran. I have flown both ATA and Air Tran - my Air Tran experience was good - this is a budget airline, so nothing fancy, but the service was timely and reliable.

[WillCAD]

Okay, I though ATA was the abbreviation for AirTran. But my flights were definitely on AirTran, so just ignore all the places where I typed ATA, I meant AirTran.

[cshore]

Airtran may be a no frills airline, but they recieve my recommendation due to their customer service. As Alikat described we recently appreciated their customer service in assisting us with changing our flight for our upcoming trip. They also provided exemplary customer service in March when we flew to Orlando. They changed the flight time, and this would have gotten us into Orlando at almost noon instead of the original time of 9:30am. This really interfered with our plans to get to Port Canaveral early. I called Airtran and they asked if we would be able to fly out a day early. (which we originally had wanted to do, but it was too expensive to fly out on that Saturday.) They switched everything without charging us one dime. I will definitely continue to use them. They seem to offer more discounted flights than any other airline that flies out of CAK or CLE.