Fly easy, fly AirTran?

Residents of the Windy City know that it's typically a lot easier to fly from Midway than O'Hare. The security lines are generally much shorter, parking is less expensive, and, most importantly, you're much more likely to depart on time. In fact, flight delays at O'Hare have become so problematic that the FAA has mandated that both American and United cut their schedules significantly there.

If that weren't enough reason to avoid the city's main airport, flying to Midway lets you take advantage of low-fare airlines that don't serve O'Hare, most notably Southwest and ATA. But how much longer will ATA be around? The airline filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in October, and announced that it would be selling its flying slots at Midway to AirTran, the Atlanta-based upstart. Now comes word of a definitive agreement between the two carriers. AirTran will assume both ATA's gates at Midway and valuable slots in New York and Washington, D.C., and may also operate some of ATA's planes until June 2005.

However, with Midway being such an important gateway to Chicago (and as we learned on The Amazing Race last night, with Chicago being "the gateway to the Midwest,") don't expect other airlines to give up on increasing their presence at Midway. Southwest has said that it expects to add service from Chicago in 2005, America West has expressed interest in the slots, and JetBlue, according to a Bloomberg report, is also interested in using the Midway gates to begin service between Chicago and New York. So it may be up to the bankruptcy court to decide which carrier ultimately gets control.

What does this mean for you, the budget-minded traveler? The more competition there is in a given city, particularly if the players include low-fare airlines, the more likely that you'll be able to find a good deal.

For example, should you have a hankerin' for Clyde Cooper's barbecue in Raleigh, the cheapest fare from Chicago right now is $158 round-trip. And the reason that fare is so low is because it's part of Southwest's winter sale - which all the majors have matched, both at Midway and O'Hare. (Whether you should choose Southwest or another airline, given the same ticket price, is a topic for another day.)

Without Southwest's sale, it's likely that a ticket to Raleigh would be much more expensive. And you might also expect to pay more if Southwest should one day become the dominant low-fare airline at Midway. (Frontier is the only significant low-fare player in Denver, for example. And you rarely see the kind of deals there that you will to a city with more competition.)

Whether you should root for AirTran, America West, or JetBlue to win ATA's gates depends on where you'd like to fly. Business travelers might hope that JetBlue would begin high-frequency, low-fare service on the lucrative Chicago-New York route. And leisure travelers could cheer on America West, with its hubs in Las Vegas and Phoenix.

But I'm hoping that AirTran will ultimately be able to carry out the agreement that was announced this week. With its substantial presence in the East Coast and Southeast, plus the new slots in New York and Washington that it would acquire from ATA, I think AirTran would be the most successful at keeping competition up and prices down. And who knows - with a second hub in Chicago, maybe a flight to Boston or Washington wouldn't require a layover in Atlanta.