"I'm not going to commit," Fornaro said Thursday night. "I'll say that if we stay on trends and we're getting the support we think we deserve ... Southwest is going to say this is a place we want to add service."
His remarks came during a dinner speech to the Association for Corporate Growth at the JW Marriott where he detailed company history and talked about the proposed merger.
It was announced last month that Southwest will buy AirTran for about $1.42 billion. The deal still needs federal approval and will not be finalized until 2012.
AirTran began service out of the Gerald R. Ford International Airport in May.
"For Southwest, this merger is about opening up their largest unserved market, which is Atlanta," Fornaro said. The Georgia city is an AirTran hub and would give Southwest access to Caribbean routes and other nearby international destinations like Mexico.
"For AirTran, what we do is gain access to Southwest's formidable financial resources," he said.
Operational integration would not occur until sometime in 2012, he said. Until the merger, the companies technically are competitors.
"We both know how to run good airlines separately and we both have relatively strong businesses, so there isn't a stampede to change things that are working."
Earlier in the day, Fornaro and Dick DeVos spoke with The Press' Editorial Board.
DeVos, a local businessman and Amway heir, founded the Regional Air Alliance of West Michigan, a group of business leaders who were instrumental in attracting AirTran to Grand Rapids.
Fornaro reiterated what Southwest leaders have said, that once the two airlines are one, markets served by AirTran would be retained.
"Their game plan is to keep and expand on what we have," Fornaro told The Press.
Regardless of the Southwest merger, West Michigan customers need to earn AirTran's continued support, DeVos said.
"That's going to be our next challenge," DeVos said. "We've gotten their attention, we now need to earn their loyalty and with the Southwest combination, we'd love to earn some expansion as well."
In his dinner speech, Fornaro highlighted the "competition for assets" that would likely take place after a merger.
"The cities that are performing well, those are the cities that are going to see the growth," Fornaro said.
DeVos said AirTran already has had a dramatic effect on air service in Grand Rapids. When the airline's entry to the market was announced in February, business leaders began to see an immediate reverse in a two-year trend of decreasing air service in the region. DeVos said fares also began to decline.
"Before they even flew a flight, Delta (Airlines) was adding capacity," he said. "Frontier (Airlines) came in right on the heels of the AirTran announcements and rode their coattails in here. They're flying dead full airplanes out here to Denver and would add capacity if they could; they love the marketplace."
DeVos said studies have shown $400 million-plus of outbound airline tickets are being purchased in West Michigan. But the region is 25 percent on average above the national average for airfares.
"If we just get to national average airfares, to an increased competitive environment with AirTran's very competitive rates, we have a possibility of retaining $100 million every year in West Michigan," he said.
Garret M. Ellison contributed to this story.