gizmo,
In the grand scheme of things, mergers don't happen overnight. United/Continental happened before the Southwest/AirTran. The planes are painted over there, but the work groups are still hashing things out. USAirways/America West happened how many years ago? and a PHX based employee has yet to begun to fly an old east route and vice versa. I know that AirTran planes are beginning to be painted in WN colors and will be outfitted with the new seats.
It probably looks frustrating, because of the reservations systems. I've always believed that pre-9/11, WN hung on by the seat of their pants using the most basic reservations system, because 1. they could and 2. they made a ton of money. I'm sure that WN had some idea of what they needed, but had other things on their plate. Now that they've signed the deal with Amadeus, things are going to fall quicker into place. GK has publicly stated that Hawaii in their sights and then Near International cities. He's already looking at HOU to be the gateway and if the city of Houston turns him down, then there are a host of other cities that will be drooling at the thought of getting 25 International cities into their city. Last year he even mentioned that WN could be flying to Europe with 5-7 years.
IIRC, AirTran's CEO, Joe Leonard said back in 2007 or 2008 that he was willing talk merger. They were not in BK and needing a way out and neither was WN, but I think that both saw the hand writing on the wall as other carriers were needing to work out deals. I would not be surprised if the next 2 airlines to begin talks with someone are Alaska and jetBlue.
You are correct in the aspect that ATL was the prize. They gained entry into a very large empty spot they had in their system. Also with the purchase of AirTran, another competitor is folded into the system.
There are going to bumps and mis-step, but so far, things are going pretty well. This year's Q1 numbers were pretty good, consider that you can now compare apples to apples