By Russell Grantham, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Jun. 15--SEATTLE -- Rebecca Barron has been through a lot of ups and downs during her aviation career.
She was working for Eastern Airlines the night it shut down. She was laid off from ValuJet after one of its planes crashed, and again during its difficult relaunch as AirTran Airways.
These days, however, definitely go in the 'up' category.
It's great to be working for an airline that's buying planes and hiring new employees while other carriers struggle, Barron said as she flew over Wyoming's mountains last week on her way to Seattle.
She was among 136 AirTran employees, executives, directors and others the airline took to pick up the first of up to 100 new Boeing 737s it ordered last year.
'To come to where we are now from nothing is just amazing,' said Barron, a 10-year AirTran veteran. She works two jobs at the discount carrier, as an agent in its airport operations center and as an employee shuttle bus driver.
Much like the new Boeing 717s that helped transform AirTran's scruffy image of just a few years ago, the carrier expects the bigger, longer-range 737s to be a milestone as well.
AirTran, one of the few profitable airlines since 9/11, says the new jets will give it transcontinental reach and lower costs, as well as capacity for new flights and routes.
'Thirty years from now, when we pick up our 900th 737, you can say 'I was there when we picked up the first airplane,'' AirTran's jubilant chief executive, Joe Leonard, told employees at a dinner at Seattle's Museum of Flight before flying to Atlanta in the first 737 the next morning. 'We now have another tool in our arsenal to take what we've got and put it at a new level.'
AirTran President Robert Fornaro said the carrier expects to use the new jets to build its presence on the West Coast, in the Northeast and perhaps to the Caribbean.
Still, AirTran is taking on huge new airplane payments at a time when high fuel prices are denting its bottom line. AirTran reported a $100.5 million profit last year, and Leonard recently said he still expects a profit this year despite near-record fuel costs.
AirTran used its first new 737 to display a modified paint job it plans for all its planes. While the tail still sports a big cursive 'a,' the fuselage is white instead of cream-colored, and there's more teal, blue and red trim.
To help roll out the its colorful new 737 -- literally -- AirTran brought along 36 Atlanta youths and chaperones from CHRIS Kids, an Atlanta charity that provides housing and counseling for abused and neglected youth.
The guests joined AirTran and Boeing employees in pulling the 85,000-pound aircraft for 65 feet along the tarmac before their celebration dinner, and AirTran donated $65,000 to the charity -- $1,000 per foot.
With more than 100 people tugging the rope, the plane easily rolled the distance, but a figure in the shadows of the 737's cockpit made sure it stopped at 65 feet.
'I couldn't figure out why (Leonard) wouldn't let us drag it a hundred feet. Is there an explanation?' quipped Harry Stonecipher, Boeing's president, who flew out from the company's Chicago headquarters for the rope pull.
Joking aside, Stonecipher said AirTran has 'got this industry figured out,' he said. 'We want people who make money with our planes to buy our planes.'
Last July, AirTran ordered 50 737-700s with 137 seats, 20 seats more than its 717s, and placed options on up to 50 more. AirTran also has rights to convert some of the orders to bigger 737-800s, which have about 165 seats.
The deal, worth almost $5 billion if all options are exercised, is Boeing's largest order of 737s in more than a year. The 737 is one of Boeing's best-selling aircraft.
'We do delivery ceremonies every time we deliver an aircraft. We kind of pulled out the stops for this one,' said Brad McMullen, a Boeing sales director. 'As far as I know, Harry doesn't come to many.'
Besides wining and dining AirTran's entourage, Boeing took its guests on a tour of the factory near Seattle where it builds the 737s.
Seattle's overcast and cold drizzle the next morning did little to dampen the AirTran employees' mood as they boarded the 737, which still had a new-car smell.
Just before the jet zoomed down the runway, Klaus Goersch, AirTran's vice president of flight operations and pilot of the delivery flight, warned passengers that he planned to bank the aircraft steeply in a traditional departure wave to the airplane's birthplace.
'Woo! Woo!' the AirTran employees hooted, laughed and clapped as the new jet rocked just after takeoff, then climbed into the clouds on its long flight to Atlanta.
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