Southwest Airlines has announced that it will be consolidation three AirTran Reservations Call Centers into a single call center, which will open in the AirTran Corporate Center in Atlanta in May. The company is not handing any of its employee’s pink slips; they are offering every employee who currently works at the Carrollton and Savannah call centers a job at the new call center.

It is anticipated that the call center will have over 300 desks. Once the transition has been made, the Carrollton and Savannah call centers will be closing on July 31 of 2013. The new call center will initially handle AirTran Airways calls, but it will eventually handle Southwest calls, becoming the first Southwest Airlines call center in the Eastern Time Zone (with other call centers located in Houston, San Antonio, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Oklahoma City, and Chicago).

Jack Smith, the vice president of customer support and services for Southwest Airlines said that this is one step in the integration of Southwest and AirTran. The new call center, he says, will honor the history of AirTran, while simultaneously “casting a future vision for call center operations at Southwest.” He is enthusiastic about this change. “Our Customer Support and Services Employees are an important touch point for our Customers, and we look forward to continuing this dedication to Customer Service in our expanded Atlanta Call Center as well as our other six Southwest Airlines CS&S Centers.”

Southwest Airlines bought the smaller airline, AirTran Airways, last year for 1.4 billion dollars, turning Southwest Airlines into the fourth largest airline company in the United States, behind the newly combined company of United Airlines and Continental Airlines in the top spot, followed by Delta Airlines, and then American Airlines. The first of the AirTran routes to fall under the Southwest Airlines banner will be flights to Key West, Florida.