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ATLANTA — Discount carrier AirTran Airways says it would be willing to discuss a codeshare agreement with larger rival Southwest Airlines Co.

"If Southwest was willing to talk, we’d certainly be willing to listen," AirTran Chief Executive Bob Fornaro told analysts on a conference call Thursday.

Codeshare agreements allow airlines to sell seats on each other’s planes.

Fornaro said AirTran and Southwest, to date, have not discussed the idea. He added in an interview with The Associated Press, "We’ll see what the future brings."

A Southwest spokeswoman, Beth Harbin, declined to comment on Fornaro’s remarks.

Calyon Securities analyst Ray Neidl said "crisis breeds strange bedfellows and the current economic malaise may be the incentive for them to do something even though they are competitive in some markets."

Dallas-based Southwest currently does not serve Atlanta, home to the world’s busiest airport. AirTran, a unit of Orlando, Fla.-based AirTran Holdings Inc., has its hub in Atlanta.

AirTran also serves several major cities in the Northeast that Southwest does not fly to. Southwest, on the other hand, has much larger scale than AirTran throughout the U.S. AirTran could benefit from that scale if the two were to ink a codeshare agreement, Fornaro said.

"We would be much more interested at this point in time than perhaps two or three years ago," Fornaro told AP.

Fornaro said AirTran has developed the ability with its reservation system over the last several years to accommodate a codesharing arrangement if it chose to proceed with one internet payday loans.

In July, Southwest announced its first international codesharing deal, with Canadian low-fare carrier WestJet Airlines Ltd. Details of the arrangement have not been disclosed, but Southwest jets will not go to Canada; WestJet planes will fly over the border to U.S. cities served by Southwest.

Southwest CEO Gary Kelly has also said the airline would like a similar agreement to connect passengers to Mexico and the Caribbean by late 2009, and to Europe and beyond in later years.

Southwest is also looking for a new partner to offer Hawaii flights. Southwest sold seats to Hawaii until partner ATA Airlines filed for bankruptcy and stopped flying.

AirTran does not serve Hawaii, but the airline will launch service to Cancun, Mexico, on Feb. 25.

Persistently high fuel prices have hampered the entire industry. Even with the recent steep decline in oil prices, fuel prices are still high by historical standards, and the worsening economy has raised concern among some carriers that demand for air travel could weaken heading into next year.

Like other airlines, AirTran has cut capacity, shed jobs, implemented new fees and made other changes to deal with high fuel costs.

Currently, several carriers say that advance bookings show their planes are expected to be as full as or fuller than a year ago over the late fall and winter holidays in part because they have taken so many seats out of planes.

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