While we were jumping up and down on Sunday like a toddler over a pudding cup about the first significant amount of rain in Atlanta since the floods last year (that’s accurate, right?), Southwest was preparing to buy Airtran for $1.4 billion in cash and stock, coming into the Atlanta and Northeast markets in a big way.  Here’s the WSJ…

As for the deal rationale, think Sweet Georgia. Southwest said a purchase of AirTran will allow the proudly quirky Southwest to expand into Atlanta, and into other major airports such as Boston and New York’s LaGuardia.

The early (and rather obvious) consensus seems to be that this move is bad news for Delta, as Southwest will push down prices on routes they haven’t competed in until now.

But according to Clark Howard, it’s great for Atlanta flyers…

“I am just ecstatic,” Howard said. “It’s like my birthday and my wedding day, the whole thing at once. This is really big. Southwest is the most important player in the airline industry and Atlanta is the biggest airport operation in the country. It’s been so weird that Southwest flies to LaGuardia, but not Atlanta.”

I’ve never flown on Southwest, so I don’t have any personal experience to draw on to compare it to Airtran (or Delta for that matter).  What do you all think of this deal?