AirTran Reports Profit and Positive Outlook

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Christine Sarkis is an SATW-award-winning journalist and executive editor at SmarterTravel. Her stories have also appeared on USA Today, Conde Nast Traveler, Huffington Post, and Business Insider. Her advice has been featured in dozens of print and online publications including The New York Times, Conde Nast Traveler, and People magazine. She has also shared travel tips on television and radio shows including Good Morning America, Marketplace, and Here & Now. Her work has been published in the anthologies Spain from a Backpack and The Best Women's Travel Writing 2008. She is currently working on a travel memoir.

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The airline industry as a whole may have a ways to go to weather the recession, but AirTran (along with Southwest) may have turned a corner slightly ahead of the pack. Today, the low-cost carrier reported a $78.4 million quarterly profit, a $93.3 million improvement over the same quarter last year, when the airline reported a net loss of $14.8 million.

2009 represents AirTran’s best first-half performance since 2001, with load factors at an all-time high of 80 percent for the quarter. AirTran credits the good performance with its early reaction to the economic downturn last year, which includes reducing capacity, selling aircraft, and reassessing its fuel hedges.

According to USA Today, AirTran CFO Arne Haak said that the airline should have “one of the best years in the company’s history.” That is hands-down one of the most positive statements that has come out of the airline industry in 2009. Let’s hope it turns out to be true.

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