See, the merger closing means absolutely nothing for you as a passenger. Ok, maybe that’s not true. It did mark the start of free beer and wifi in United’s Red Carpet Clubs. Nothing else has happened to impact you yet. That’s all coming later, and I’m eagerly awaiting details on what will happen and when. But for now, it’s all a financial deal and that’s boring. Let’s talk about the other two.

Use BA miles on American Transatlantic Flights and Vice Versa
To paraphrase Vince Vaughn from his earlier, funnier days, British Airways and American are now all growns up. Friday marked the day that American AAdvantage members could earn and use miles on British Airways flights over the Atlantic.

To those who don’t fly American, this may sound insane. You United Mileage Plus members and Delta SkyMiles members have been able to do this with your European partners for years, but BA and American have always been a pain in the butt. They didn’t allow “earning and burning” on each other’s flights because they weren’t able to get antitrust immunity. Nothing like punishing your customers, but hey, that’s all behind us now, right?

And yes, I have proof this works. My parents had been waiting for the day to book a planned trip to Europe in March, and I called American first thing on Friday to put it on hold. The agents said they had been receiving a lot of calls, and they seemed pretty happy about that. I got the seats for my parents without any trouble. Happy day.

The reaction has been mixed in the mileage community, but as usual, I look to Gary Leff at View from the Wing for his opinions as an expert. There are some goodies in here for BA Executive Club members, but in general, this is a very welcome move (except for those pesky fuel surcharges).

Midwest is Finally Dead
It seems like such old news, but Friday also marked the official (in my mind) death of Midwest Airlines. Oh sure, it had been left for dead years ago, but up until Friday, you could still book a flight at midwestairlines.com on flights with the old YX code. On Friday, the switch was flipped and that was gone. This is all good news for travelers, and to celebrate, I’m bringing back an old favorite image.

I’m very happy about this one, because it means all reservations are on a single (Frontier) system now and there are no confusing crossover issues. I had all kinds of problems before with a Midwest record locator on a Frontier flight operated for Midwest or something like that.. It was just a mess. No more. Thank you.

This does not, however, mark the official end of the Midwest Airlines website. It’s still hanging around for Midwest Miles redemptions for now, but that’s about it. If you try to book a regular flight, it redirects you to frontierairlines.com.

I suppose it’s an appropriate end for Midwest. The airline had long ago been forgotten about by most people in the US, so the fact that its disappearance was overshadowed by other news is quite fitting. It is important to remember that the one thing most people remember about Midwest, the cookie, will continue to live on. So this is all good news, except for those people who used to work for the airline, I imagine.

For example, the airline’s vision statement begins with “We believe that every employee, regardless of personal beliefs or world-view, has been created in the image and likeness of God.” It’s become even more of a topic with the integration of the Frontier and Midwest teams that didn’t choose to work for a religious company.

So, let’s get on it with. (Click for Part 1, Part 2)

ON PARTNERING AND COMPETING WITH THE LEGACY AIRLINES

Cranky: With some of the bigger airlines, you’re flying for them and you’re competing against them. I mean, you could potentially have a codesharing agreement, then you’re flying for them on a contract and competing against them. It’s a tangled web. Does that cause any tension?
Bryan: I have to break it into the two geographies. Nobody cared about Midwest. The fact that Northwest had an equity stake in Midwest and we codeshared with them. Nobody cared about that. Obviously you know, with Frontier, United was obviously concerned about it. You know, people prefer less competition and not more, but there really wasn’t in our minds, there wasn’t going to be a strategy where Frontier was going to liquidate.

They were making money. Companies that make money in bankruptcy don’t go away. . . . Frontier wasn’t going away. I think that’s the message, whether they wanted to believe it or not. It was going to be around anyway, so hopefully better to have somebody around that’s rational at the controls than somebody who’s irrational.

Cranky: Although, they could have gone away if Southwest bought them. Then there would have been two airlines in Denver.
Bryan: Southwest was free to make an offer and compete, but at the end of the day, they didn’t lose because of insufficient consideration, they had labor issues. I guess in fairness they didn’t lose, they withdrew.

ON RELIGION AND BUSINESS

Cranky: I know you’re busy so just one last question. From a culture perspective, you said morale is high right now, people are pretty excited, you have a single brand. How has the integration been from the perspective of a Frontier employee or Midwest employee? I know you have a very strong culture here in Indianapolis and I know that you’re very religious. Have you seen any tension between Frontier people coming into this and saying “well what’s going on here. What are we getting involved in?”
Bryan: If there is tension out there, it’s pretty low and people are being civil. The Republic vision statement clearly addresses our feelings that we’re all created in the image of god. It calls us to a higher standard of treating people with respect and dignity. In my mind, it calls us to treat people fairly according to the work that they do. It wasn’t to convert people or proselytize. . . . There’s something more here than just a job. We have people of different faiths, different backgrounds, different ethnic cultures. Most airlines are melting posts. It’s just a recognition of who we are and as long as we work together, we’re going to be successful . . . .

Now, we’re not hiding our faith either. We take positions on issues. Abortion was an issue that we took a position on several years ago. It was very controversial, both internally and externally. But again, it’s down to, whether we believe in the sanctity of life or not. It’s not that we were saying that if you get an abortion, you’re fired. That wasn’t the issue. This is a big meaty issue in our culture and our society and people should understand what we think. And oh by the way, if you are in the position of having an unwanted pregnancy, let us know and we can help. And we had employees that did and we did, we arranged a couple of adoptions.

From a Republic perspective, it’s been such a large part of our culture. People who are looking at joining a company and see this either are turned off and don’t apply or they’re turned on and they come here. It’s our culture. Now you’re being bought as Midwest or Frontier and you’re being brought into this culture and clearly there were some folks that were very offended by that. A very, very small number of folks. Look, it’s America. Most of us have a Judeo-Christian world view, so I think we’re more likely to be aligned on this. That was certainly the case with Frontier and Midwest. Now the media talked about is it right or is it wrong? Should CEOs do this, should CEOs do that? It was very controversial according to the press, but that was good too. You know. I mean, at the end of the day, getting people talking about it is healthy.

Cranky: Well, there’s no reason you can’t do it. It’s a company that you can set it up however you want to set up. This isn’t the government.
Bryan: It is true, there’s no law against it. We certainly don’t have a box that you check on your application: “I believe, I don’t believe.” The only qualification to work here is “do good work.” You can believe in the tooth fairy.

Cranky: Wait, that’s not real?
Bryan: It is to my kids

Cranky: I think it’s perfectly fine. People can choose who to fly, who to work for, what they want to do. I just think about it from the perspective of someone who comes in from a high culture company like Frontier, has a really strong good positive culture, not to say that this isn’t positive, and coming into something else that’s a potentially different feel for someone. And removed as well since you’re in Indiana and they’re in Denver. Was there really a tough transition for people?
Bryan: I thought you were just talking from a religious aspect of the culture. Looking at culture in a much more broad sense of the word, prior to the brand announcement being made, there was tension between all cultures. I mean, for the Republic side, “how is owning Midwest and Frontier going to help me in my daily work?” Midwest people I think understood that the company would be gone had we not purchased it, but still trying to figure out, “who are we and what do we do?”

Same for Frontier. “We survived bankruptcy and we survived being taken over by Southwest. What does it mean now?” And so there’s a lot of post-transaction reflection that all three employment groups were doing and it has been a tough transition.

Making the brand announcement has been like a tonic. People can finally say that we know who we’re trying to be. You can make a decision on whether you like it or you don’t like it. If you say, “well, I don’t like the brand proposition with no first class seating.” Ok, well, act accordingly. We hope you stay, but if you don’t, god bless you. And the majority will stay because they love the industry, they love working for Frontier.

ON LABOR INTEGRATION

Bryan: We also have labor integration issues. It’s interesting that non-represented classes of employees, we were able to hire mediators arbitrators to sit down with both sides and within 90 days we’re integrated and everything is cool. People are now able to transfer around within the larger network and it’s working out pretty well. In cases where we have represented workers in different unions, it’s just a lot more conflict. It’s the classic US Airways east-west stuff.

Cranky: Hopefully it’s not to that extent.
Bryan: Well, it’s not. Look, our world view is if you don’t want to integrate the seniority lists, don’t integrate the seniority lists. We’re ok with that. We’re not merging the companies in the classic sense. We’re not merging Frontier into Republic. Yeah, we own it, but it’s the Airbus operator. It’s always going to be the Airbus operator and a CS300 operator, but it’s going to be a separate certificate. So we don’t care.

If merging the senoirity list is creating tension, then don’t do it. So there are answers. We’ll treat everybody the same. I think the whole seniority integration is just a red herring. It’s more union vs. union as opposed to employee vs. employee. We’re all going to sink or swim together. A lot of our Republic capacity is now in the brand operation, so the brand operation better work.

Cranky: I think I’ve probably kept you longer than you had anyway, so thank you.
Bryan: It was good meeting you.

In fact, I woke up the morning of the trip not even sure if I was going to go. I ended up deciding that yes, it was worth taking the trip, so I dragged myself together and called a cab to pick me up an hour before the flight. Yes, that’s the beauty of flying out of Long Beach, and JetBlue’s perfectly-timed mid-morning flight to Chicago fit the bill, especially at $144 one way.

I arrived at the airport, snagged my boarding pass (I couldn’t check in online), and realized I was at the north gates. Ugh. See, JetBlue primarily uses the south gates, but there are a couple random flights that they need to stick up north. The security lines there aren’t really able to handle it, so I sat there for 15 minutes waiting to get through. After I was through, I took a seat for just couple minutes before boarding.

Our plane was parked fairly far away, so we had a nice walk in the pleasant sunshine. The only problem? It was a little warm and I was dressed for chilly Chicago. We pushed back right on time and launched out toward the ocean. After flipping around in the still skies, we pointed east and stayed on a southerly track until we got toward Albuquerque to ride the wind.

I got myself a ginger ale and a meal. Wait, JetBlue doesn’t have meals? I beg to differ. They have a ton of different snacks and you can take as many as you want. I had cashews, plaintain chips, and chocolate chip cookies. It was a pretty good meal, and it was free. Then I sat back and remembered once again why I love LiveTV and don’t care about internet.

If I can go online, I’m going to do work. With LiveTV, I don’t have that choice and I watch things I wouldn’t otherwise watch. I saw a repeat of the previous night’s Stanford – Ohio St volleyball semifinals match. That was excellent.

There were a few cloud layers as we descended, and we headed out over the lake before looping around to land to the west where it was a very hectic week of work and play.

More than a week later, I was so excited to finally come home after being away for 15 of the last 22 nights, and man, was I tired. With such an early morning flight home, I tried to get about 5 hours of sleep, but even those hopes were dashed when the ash cloud rolled over London and I had to help a client out of a jam. (It was a success.)

We got to the airport at 545a for our $175 flight in the darkness with rain starting to fall. Having checked in, we went straight to security where we found a long, disorganized line. We got in the long “expert” line, but after 10 minutes, we were all redirected to the main line. Later, we found that it was still open on the other side so we were just frustrated. It took a whopping 30 minutes to get through security.

There was a long line of people boarding, so we just got in it. When we were about halfway there (with very few people sitting down), they announced that they would now begin general boarding with rows 15 to 23. Huh? There’s no way all those people who had already boarded were preboarders. When the next rows were never called, the remaining few stragglers of us just walked on the plane and nobody said a word.

Once onboard, we had no trouble finding bin space and took our seats, one row behind Stretch seating. Hmm, does that mean we need to start calling the regular seats Squeeze seating? The legroom actually was perfectly fine and the dark green leather seats were quite comfortable.

We launched into the muck (I don’t remember the last time the weather was good flying out of Indiana) and went through several layers of clouds before finally peaking out just above the clouds at 30,000 feet or so. I love flying in the early morning light.

We had purchased Classic fares which meant pre-reserved seats and free TV. On Frontier, everyone gets free TV until you get in the air, so they give you a taste and hope you want to pay to continue your show. But since we were Classic, the flight attendant came by and swiped his card. He had a list of people who had Classic or Classic Plus fares so we didn’t have to show our boarding pass.

I had a glass of water in the air and then watched some TV. This time it was the Jetsons and Saved by the Bell. Of course, I alternated that with just staring out the window as the clouds fell away to reveal a beautiful early morning view.

We descended in blue skies as I drifted in an out of consciousness. We landed and taxied to the gate where we sat for awhile, waiting for the jet bridge operator to figure out how to make it work. No worries, we were still early and got off without any trouble.

We found our connecting gate and to my surprise, we were on a Midwest-liveried airplane. Despite having flown “Midwest” before, this was my first time on a plane that actually said Midwest on the side.

We entered the jet bridge to see a basket of earphones telling people their TV might be free. The people in front of us picked them up, clearly not knowing there were no TVs onboard the E-jet. I knew this was going to be a problem for the airline.

This airplane had the Midwest blue seats along with the old extra-wide Signature seating up front. This really is the closest I’m going to get to flying Midwest, and you know what? Those coach seats were really comfortable. If you’ve never been on an E-jet, the cabin is narrower but it doesn’t feel that way. Here’s a shot I took of both cabins from the same perspective:

We took our seats and it looked like we would be on time, but we weren’t. No explanation was given but I did see a flight attendant messing with the water in the lav.

I was so tired that after pushback, I closed my eyes and drifted in and out of sleep until about halfway through the flight when they came around with their only drink service. I had ginger ale. The flight was uneventful, though I was surprised to see some thick clouds masking a wintry landscape on the way in to Long Beach.

The flight attendant up front was very friendly and put up with some rather obnoxious passengers on board. She also provided some comic relief when every time she tried to make an announcement, the captain would interrupt. The whole plane was laughing.

Coming in to Long Beach was fun with lots of low clouds that broke just as we came in over the city. Here’s a 5 minute video if you’re interested:

ON INFLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT

Bryan: The LiveTV take rate on sub 2 hour flights is low single digits. People really like it. We tried to get in on the [Embraer] 190s but when we looked at the mission of the 190s, which was thinner, shorter haul markets, we just couldn’t cost justify it. So the next thing was wifi and we’re rolling that out this summer.

Cranky: One of my concerns along those lines is you mix the fleets on routes. I know, out of Long Beach for example, there’s an A318 and an Embraer 190. That’s pretty common. So are you concerned about having the different product?
Bryan: A lot of it comes down to the message. There will be people on the Airbus who want wifi but we’re not planning on that this year. We’re going to see how it does on the E-Jets. So the brand promise is some form of inflight entertainment. Not necessarily LiveTV or wifi but some form will be available on the fleet.

Cranky: 70 seats and up
Bryan: Yeah. There is a connectivity option for wifi for small jets. The small jet brand will be differentiated whether it’s Lynx or Connect. There will be some marketing differentiation so people understand. It’ll be very clear when you’re on an E-Jet flight, this is what you’ll get. The only difference will be LiveTV on the Airbus and wifi on the E-jet. There’s a lot of value in the Ejet, but what it really does is that in a place like Milwaukee, 100 seaters are just too many seats for some of these long, thin markets and 137 seats is WAY too much. [laughs]

ON HUB COMPETITION

Cranky: Looking at the route network as it stands today, you have your two main hubs in the two most competitive cities in the country right now.
Bryan: Yeah, well, we didn’t start that fight.

Cranky: I think others expected you not to be around at this point, so that’s why this fight is going on. What are you seeing right now? Are you at a place where things are going well? Do you see a place where all these airlines can exist at their current levels?
Bryan: Well, first I would say that we were disappointed by our Q1 revenue results. How much of that would be brand confusion, our poor execution on managing technology systems, codeshare process . . . . We learned a lot of hard questions in Q1, took a lot of chances in Q1. We learned another hard lesson that it’s a competitive marketplace and if we aren’t prepared to compete on price, we aren’t going to get the business. We’ve absorbed all those lessons and we’ve hit the cover off the ball in March. We’ve hit the cover off the ball in April. Advance booking numbers into the summer are off the charts. So, it feels really good right now, actually.

We’re less interested today in what the competition is doing. We’re really just into what we’re doing. We’re running a really good airline – 99.9% completion factor, 87% on time rates so we’re putting out a great product in the second quarter and in the first quarter as well but we all suffered from weather events. I think you stay the course right now.

We still have a lot of integration work to do. The brand decision was hard for us to make and it was hard for Midwest, but it was also liberating because now it allows the commercial people to really focus on this is the brand. This is the brand promise. We don’t have to worry about messaging in different ways. That’s good for the employees. We now know that we are one and we are delivering this product. We’ve just gotta execute and the competition will take care of itself.

I do not see the competition exiting Milwaukee. We’re taking traffic from northern Illinois, and we’re paying a pretty price for it. Unfortunately, the discounted pricepoint is something like $60 off to get people to go up to Milwaukee. When they get there, they have a great experience. It’s just a smaller, better ease of use airport that’s more reliable.

It’s taken a lot of discounting to get people to come up there to try us but we hope once they try us, they’ll come back.

Cranky: This sort of goes back to what you were talking about before about people buying on price. What can you do to get people to buy on product or on service?
Bryan: If that’s what I said, I wasn’t clear. I think price is clearly #1, #2 is product.

Maybe it’s the win or tie strategy. As long as we’re price competitive, we believe that we can beat the other guys. We don’t believe our brand is strong enough today, I hate to say it, but the facts are the facts, to get a price premium.

ON WEB BOOKING AND DISTRIBUTION

Cranky: Is there anything in the way people buy that can change to help that?
Bryan: Certainly the other LCCs do a much better job of driving customres to their website.

There’s a huge gap in terms of distribution on our own, whether its via the call center or the IBE [internet booking engine], but that’s an opportunity for us to start selling products in ways where you’re going to find the best deals on frontier.com, we’re going to bundle some things that you can buy online.

Cranky: And that’s already there to some extent. I know for our flight home, we bought the Classic product. It shows it to you, but if someone books through a travel agent or online agent, they’re not even going to see if it’s an option.
Bryan: That’s true. We have a workaround on that but we’ve debated whether we want to roll it out or do we want to make Classic fares available on the GDS. It’s a debate that happens internally, but there is one side of the market that would drive us to make it available.

For example, all of our corporate accounts work through a corporate travel agent. [Classic Plus] is a product that they want. They want refundability, flexibility. They want one way pricing. They want seat assignments. They want free bags. That Classic [Plus] product is what they want, and the only way they can buy is through the GDS. We do have to make that product available to that segment of the market.

Cranky: It’s not today?
Bryan: No, not today. It should be by the summer. . . . Then do we take it out even further? Do we roll it out to all the GDS? But put distribution aside for a second.

ON FEES

Bryan: What we’re really trying to do is give customers choice. A lot of people talk about, “don’t charge me bag fees.” We’ll give you that option. We’ll give you the option to buy a la carte or to buy a bundle. You’re in control. If you really are offended by those fees, then by all means, we want you to buy the bundled product. We obviously want people to buy that.

It’s interesting. On our website we’re getting less than 40% of our sales there. But of that 40% that’s buying, almost 40% of those are buying the bundled product. So the take rate’s pretty high.

Cranky: It’s a huge revenue opportunity.
Bryan: Yeah, I think so. And certainly rolling that out to the Midwest network will help as well. There are lots of opportunities to gain share.

ON CODESHARING

Cranky: Is this something, ya know, you see people interested in codesharing like JetBlue going to SABRE to open up that opportunity. Is that something you’re interested in?
Bryan: Well, we’re SABRE-hosted.

Cranky: But are you looking to pursue codeshares?
Bryan: Well, of course we’re interested. You were in Phoenix so you heard the whole collaboration speech that was given. Just looking at companies that cover huge regions of geography that we don’t touch and the reverse is true. Looking at how we could expand the network. There were discussions pre-bankruptcy with Frontier but of course it takes a lot of time and energy.

I’ll have the final chapter in the next couple of days.

Our hour-long conversation was just downright fascinating covering topics from religion, to integration with Frontier and Midwest, along with bundling vs a la carte pricing and more. When we first sat down, Bryan immediately asked about me. We spent nearly ten minutes on my background before getting into the airline talk, which is where we begin today. I’ve broken this across the aisle interview down into three parts. Today, we start with the airline’s recent expansion and go into the strategy and now-discontinued multiple brand strategy. (Part 2 on competition and fees, Part 3 on religion)

ON THE RESULTS OF FRONTIER’S RECENT EXPANSION

Bryan: Where are you living now?
Cranky: Long Beach, actually, and I’m flying you back on Monday.
Bryan: Thank you.
Cranky: Gotta make sure we keep you there.
Bryan: Of all the new markets that we’ve opened that’s the one that’s really struggling. We’re trying some targeted advertising in Denver, because a lot of folks in Denver don’t know where Long Beach is. We’re trying to figure out how to get people to understand that it’s the Southern California alternative.

We’re opening 15 new markets and that is the only one that’s not hitting its revenue forecast. Some are just barely making it, like Santa Barbara is just, but some, like Branson, what a shocker.

Cranky: I was gonna say, you’ve already added capacity there.
Bryan: It’s blowing the doors off. The only reason we went there was because we had a really high revenue guarantee.
Cranky: I guess you won’t need the revenue guarantee right now.
Bryan: No, it’s going to be very profitable.

ON THE INITIAL REASON FOR BUYING FRONTIER AND MIDWEST

Cranky: So the strategy seems to be now more find the right markets for the Embraers.
Bryan: Step back a bit and look at a higher level. We’ve had great growth, great expansion through 2008. Then the fuel shock happened and we learned a couple of things. One, airlines are very jaundiced about adding capacity, and two, consolidation is on everybody’s mind and a lot of people’s lips. . . . Quite frankly it’s happened slower than I would have thought. I think the first go around with Continental and United should have been done . . . when United’s market cap was $600 million instead of $3.6 billion.

As the operator, consolidation is good since it makes your partners stronger . . . but the fact is that when they combine, if 70% of their passengers are flow, they can flow them through anywhere they want. So they can operate larger capacity planes by funneling more flow over a specific hub. Dehubbing becomes a very serious option.

Cranky: Shrinking pie for regionals
Bryan: Shrinking pie for regionals and certainly shrinking pie for smaller regional jets. We have to acknowledge there’s just not a lot of growth opportunities. There’s the opportunity for market share to move around, but having alternatives is healthy. We never wanted to be so big with one airline so that the loss of that partner would be an extinction model for us. But now, the fact that our core business is at risk for virtually no growth if not contraction, if there’s one area that can benefit from the capacity reduction and consolidation, it’s the LCC side.

ON REGIONAL CONSOLIDATION

Cranky: Do you expect consolidation on the regional side?
Bryan: There’s a lot more discussion about it. The Wall Street analysts love transactions, you know? It’s hard to consolidate because most of the contracts that we all have have change in control provisions that in some cases allow partners to cancel deals or at least renegotiate deals.

Cranky: Could be something like a Mesa in bankruptcy?
Bryan: I won’t say that it’s impossible. Nothing is impossible. I won’t even say it’s implausible, because when there’s a will there’s a way. . . . We’re all looking for the same thing. Where can you take out non value-add expenses to become more cost effective. I just think it’s hard because the seller is not necessarily controlling the revenue stream.

ON THE NOW DISCONTINUED MULTIPLE BRAND STRATEGY

Cranky: So now you’re in the [low cost carrier] LCC space. You started bringing Midwest and Frontier together. The question I asked you in Phoenix is “are you regretting it yet?”
Bryan: [Laughs]
Cranky: It’s been an interesting road. I’m particularly curious. It seems like at the beginning you had this plan to operate multiple brands, get the operational efficiency of running them behind the scenes. Clearly there’s been a change to go toward the Frontier brand after a few months of this. So what have you seen? Is the multiple brand thing something that just doesn’t work for a single airline?
Bryan: When we started looking at the possibilities of these acquisitions, we went outside the airline industry. Avis and Budget was a good example of the model where, here’s a company that’s in the rental car business where they have the premium Avis brand and the discount is Budget. And they seem to coexist well. And that was really sort of the example of a model where we were going to go after.

Cranky: Where Midwest would be the premium brand and Frontier . . .
Bryan: . . . the discount brand, yeah. We learned quickly. The education that we got was in 2009 we bought these brands at the trough of the recession and there was no demand for premium anything. So the Midwest response, even before we bought them was to make less premium available . . . so there was a lot of experimentation out of desperation to try and figure out a model that would allow that airline to work. Everything was working against them.

Cranky: Especially in Milwaukee
Bryan: Yeah, so we did start the customer research process not necessarily to pick one brand or not but just to measure brand health and try to figure out what resonated with customers. What we discovered was the Milwaukee community wanted the same thing as everyone else. They wanted affordable fares, nonstop service. In their own ways, each one of these airlines are trying to provide that.

A lot of what we learned is the Midwest brand had this perception of what it was back then. Customers would revisit the airline and there would always be disappointment. “That’s not what I remember Midwest to be.” And they were right, it wasn’t.

Cranky: They were lobster and fine china back in the ’90s.
Bryan: The Milwaukee community loved it but as soon as the economy soured, budgets went from buy first to buy coach. But sorry, you can’t buy that on Midwest. After all the struggles they went through, they still enjoy lots of hometown customer support. That underdog role that they took on with AirTran, people wanted them to succeed. But they really weren’t fulfilling the need of the customer at the end of the day. Shrinking service from the west coast, abandoning the west coast. Huge, huge mistake. Then again, the MD80s burned so much gas and the 717s couldn’t make it to the west coast. They had few choices and they were all bad.

Cranky: And now you have Frontier. Have you seen the acceptance levels, is there anything different now that Midwest is gone from Milwaukee?
Bryan: Interestingly enough, one, Frontier actually has great customer service. The inflight experience is actually very complementary. Having TV on the airplane is a new amenity for folks in Milwaukee and they really like it. We thought there was a need to try to bridge between what was Frontier and what was Midwest and the answer to that is Stretch [extra legroom seating].

I’ll post the rest of the interview over the next week or so.

Last week, I wrote this over on BNET:

So if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on Frontier surviving, taking only the fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie from Midwest. And that would be the right move.

I’m very glad to hear that they’ve listened to me. Actually, I’m just glad that CEO Bryan Bedford made the right decision here. I wasn’t so sure that would be the case.

Frontier will be the surviving brand, and the livery and logo won’t be changing. That’s good, because major brand changes can cost a lot of money. They’ll avoid many of those issues by sticking with what they’ve got. The only thing that will be kept from Midwest? The cookie. Once the transition is complete, you’ll get a cookie on every flight.

And when will that transition be complete? Thanks to an incredibly simple and completely unnecessary graphic that was likely created by some former consultant, we know that the operational integration will be complete by November with branding completely done by October 2011. You can follow along at the new website, FrontierMidwest.com. Seriously. Kind of funny that their killing off the Midwest name yet they stuck it in the transition url, huh?

What else do we know about this deal? Well, all planes will be painted in Frontier colors and they’ll get their own animal tails. The first one to get painted will arrive by the end of April and it will appropriately be painted up with a badger. The badger is the state animal of Wisconsin and mascot of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. People in Wisconsin will get to name the badger. It’s a nice gesture.

More importantly, the customer experience will start becoming more consistent here. In the media kit, the FAQ talks about Frontier’s plans for inflight entertainment.

The TVs installed in our Airbus fleet will stay. We are still exploring other in-flight entertainment options and plan to have some form available in each of our aircraft by 2011.

I’m glad to see the TVs sticking around, but I’m wondering what’s coming on the rest of the fleet. I would hope that they’d put TVs on their Embraer 170/190 fleet since those go pretty long distances. But the way this is worded makes me think that their version of inflight entertainment may very well just end up being inflight internet. We’ll have to see.

In the end, this branding decision isn’t big news. It’s exactly what was expected and it’s the right thing to do. The big news is that the team at Republic made the right decision. That’s good to see.

Battle of the Airline Brands: Frontier vs. Midwest. Which Will Survive? – BNET
It’s a fight to the death. Next week, we’ll find out if Frontier or Midwest is the surviving brand.

elope for less – antibride.com
Weddings are painful to plan, and sometimes you just want to elope. If you do it, here’s how you can save some cash.

Unclogging the Overhead Bins: Spirit to Charge for Carry-Ons -BNET
Spirit is charging for bags and I don’t have a problem with it at all. I think it’s a good move on their part.

Jazz Adds Boeing 757s as Regional Airlines Think Bigger – BNET
Jazz, the regional that flies almost entirely for Air Canada, is getting into the 757 flying business. Goofy? Maybe, but it’s a smart move.

United and US Airways: Why the Merger Won’t Happen – BNET
The rumors are out there about a United and US Airways merger, but I’m just not buying it.

Dumbest Cities to Receive Federal Airline Service Subsidies – BNET
And here are the SCASDP grants I like the least. Wish they hadn’t been given the grants.

Finding Help Booking Travel and Managing Irregular Operations -View from the Wing
Gary Leff gives Cranky Concierge a ringing endorsement, and I couldn’t be happier.

Will a New Bill to Boost U.S. Tourism Help or Hurt? – ABC News
I tell ABC News why I’m not a fan of the Travel Promotion Act. Mainly, because it sucks.

fly early, fly happy – BNET
Why flying early in the day is better.

Airlines Shovel Out as Winter Weather Pummels Profits – BNET
Winter storms suck for passengers but they suck for airlines as well. In fact, they’re going to be draining profits, and Continental tells us just how much.

Midwest and Frontier Airlines Have Big Plans for Kansas City – BNET
Midwest and Frontier are finally moving in together in Kansas City, and it looks like the beginning of an experiment to see if they can grow the place.

Continental Airlines to charge extra for exit rows seats – Cleveland Plain-Dealer
I talk about why I think Continental is starting to charge for exit rows and why I don’t mind it.

Alaska Airlines Snubs Wi-Fi Provider Row 44 — Not to Mention Its Passengers – BNET
I waited awhile before commenting on Alaska’s choice to go with Aircell instead of Row 44 for inflight internet. I still don’t quite understand what happened.

For Republic, this was probably a pretty easy decision to make. The order for 40 planes with 138 seats each is worth $3.1 billion at list prices, but that means they probably paid $29.95. Like Airbus when it first tried to break into the US market, Bombardier must have been willing to give a sweetheart deal to anyone who would take a chance.

The C-Series is the first non-Boeing/Airbus airplane in the 100-150 seat category to get an order in the US since Douglas back in the day. So maybe it’s fitting that the interior of the cabin looks remarkably like the MD-80. Try to ignore the hilarious rainbow of colors strategically placed by Bombardier in this shot (Asian, black, white, Indian, young, old, bald, gray hair, blah, blah, blah) and you’ll see that it actually looks like a vast improvement over the MD-80:

The seating is 2×3 across, just as in the MD airplanes, but you can see that the windows are nice and big, and, most importantly, so are the overhead bins. They show roller bags being placed wheels-in, so these should be just like what you’ll find on a new 737 or A320, just with only one middle seat per row instead of two.

The other thing that isn’t like the MD-80 is that the engines are slung under the wings, so you won’t be stuck in row 32 staring at an engine casing. The engines are really what have the chance to make this thing succeed. After heading toward the junk heap of formerly important aviation-related companies, Pratt & Whitney has decided to make a comeback with its Geared Turbofan. This is a complex engine that has never been able to be produced reliably for commercial operations before. (They can do it for military.) Pratt thinks it will make it work, and that means a 20% reduction in fuel burn. If it works, that’s huge, and this airplane will fly long before Boeing or Airbus even get close with their next generation airplane. If not, well, this plane may not fly at all.

So what will Republic do with this? Well, the plan is to put them into service in the branded operation – that means Frontier and Midwest. They don’t have much of a choice here. If any airline decided to outsource its 138-seat flying requirements, then there would be an absolute revolt from the front lines. Most airlines don’t have the ability to do it now anyway.

In the branded world, they won’t say if it’s going to be a Frontier or a Midwest product, but let’s be honest. By the time these things show up in 2015, I’ll put money down there’s really only one brand left (if any, I suppose). But there are some clues in the press release about where they’re taking their product.

The airplane will be configured with 138 seats. The first five rows will be in STRETCH configuration with a few inches more legroom and nothing else. That tells me that Midwest’s Signature Service days are numbered. They’ll end up standardizing with STRETCH as the premium option.

Will these airplanes end up replacing the Airbus fleet? It wouldn’t surprise me if that happens one day, but the C-Series can’t really offer the A320-size capacity that Frontier might want to continue to have at the upper end. For what it’s worth, Republic says that no retirements are planned because of this. Well yeah, it’s still 5 years away.

To sum it up, the planes must have been really cheap, and they won’t be delivered for 5 years. Might as well get in on the action now with the hope that this thing works as advertised. If it doesn’t, then I’m sure they can just walk away. If not, then they’ll be in a good place.