I got a little geeky yesterday with all the talk of the Midwest takeover, but I didn’t actually bother talking about the impact on customers. Sorry about that. Yesterday afternoon, it got even more interesting as AirTran came back with a bid that’s a quarter higher than the TPG one. So, we have two competing bids. What’s best for you?

The focal point here is clearly Milwaukee. That’s the home of Midwest and their largest base of operations. It is also what appeals to AirTran. If you live in Milwaukee, you’ve been fighting tooth-and-nail to keep Midwest independent so you can have your hometown airline. Now that the airline will likely be bought by someone, you might want to change your stance.

On one side, we have the TPG/Northwest bid. This is best for Northwest since it basically helps eliminate a competitor. Though they say that Northwest won’t have any management control, you can bet that’s a crock. That’s likes saying Richard Branson has no control over Virgin America.

So what’s best for Northwest here? A nice small airline that’s friendly to them and is just big enough to keep competitors out will do the trick. You probably won’t see much growth, and it’s more likely you’ll see it shrink over time. Frills will start to disappear as TPG tries to get its money out of the investment. The airline will not be the same. If you live in Milwaukee, the last thing you want is more dominance from Northwest. You want more choice. This is not the best outcome for customers.

If there is any winner in this deal other than Northwest, it’s CEO Tim Hoeksema. He clearly likes this deal because he gets to keep his job, even if it is at the expense of his employees. If the airline does try to get “more efficient” and doesn’t grow, that means layoffs are coming. Apparently that’s ok with Hoeksema as long as he keeps his job.

On the other side, we have the AirTran bid. In this offer, you’re just about guaranteed to get more flights as AirTran continues to try to establish a beachhead in the Midwest. After their bid to buy ATA and establish a Chicago hub failed, they’ve decided the next best thing is to move up the lakefront and go to Milwaukee. So, while the Midwest level of service will undoubtedly go downhill, there will at least be more flights to more places for less money. That seems like a better outcome to me.

And for current Midwest employees, that also means that their jobs would probably be more secure since AirTran will need people to run the growing operation. Well, almost all jobs would be more secure. CEO Hoeksema would lose his, and since he’s already shown he’s willing to screw his employees to save his own job, this will be a tough fight once again.

Of course, if Northwest/TPG succeeds, there’s nothing saying that AirTran won’t try to make a run at Milwaukee on its own anyway. I’d have to think that would not come out well for Midwest in the end. No matter what, it’s unlikely that Midwest will continue in its current form at this point.

I’ve been pretty confused since word came out that TPG and Northwest would be teaming up to offer to buy Midwest. I mean, all the talk had been about AirTran’s offer for the last few months, and now that’s gone. AirTran walked away as this higher bid came rolling in. So what does TPG see in Midwest? So many questions, so little time. I’ll let this handy dandy graphic explain what I know.

As you can tell, not much is clear except that Northwest has their grubby little hands all over this. They still have this whole “we own the heartland” belief, and in their minds, Milwaukee falls into that territory. Midwest has never been much of a threat to them, but AirTran? No way, that’s a tough competitor. Can’t have that.

So they get together with TPG to buy out Midwest and remove AirTran from the equation. Northwest says they’ll be a silent partner, so there won’t be a merger or any sort of management transfer, but it means they don’t have to compete with AirTran and they like that a lot. And let’s not forget that Northwest has a nice cozy codesharing and frequent flier agreement with Midwest that gives them that warm and fuzzy cooperative feeling.

Of course, for something like this to work, they couldn’t do it alone, so they partnered with private equity firm TPG, famous for their previous airline investments. Now, TPG has a bunch of smart guys, but I cannot figure out why they’d want Midwest. This is a struggling airline with limited growth prospects in its current form, so why would they bid so much money for the airline? If they thought they could make some good money, they’d do it, of course. But how can they make money here? I’m sure they have a plan, but I don’t know how it can make this investment pay for itself.

One person who is happy is the CEO of Midwest. He would have lost his job with AirTran but now he gets to keep it. It would make sense if they kept him and guaranteed him a job in exchange for his endorsement of the deal. It was his opposition among others that held up the AirTran deal for so long. Maybe this is the way to get things moving, if he’s willing to play along.

But what will happen to the rest of the employees? I’d be nervous if I were them. Job cuts wouldn’t surprise me at all as TPG tries to get money out of their investment.

Now, AirTran is done here . . . or are they? Even if this deal goes through, there’s no reason they can’t set up shop in Milwaukee on their own. They’ll just have some added competition now, but they could still do it if they wanted. My guess is that instead they’ll look for another airline that might want to merge. (Frontier, anyone?)

There’s lots of speculation here, but I honestly just don’t get it. I know why Northwest likes this. I know why Midwest’s CEO likes this. I just don’t know what TPG sees.

It took them a long time, but Northwest finally figured it out. Blaming your employees for your problems does NOT garner customer support.

As you’ve probably heard (especially if you live in the upper Midwest), Northwest has been having tremendous cancellation problems at the end of the past two months due to crew shortages. When this problem first occurred at the end of June, the airline put out a statement saying “as a result of several factors including air traffic control restrictions, severe summertime weather and a higher than normal level of pilot absenteeism, Northwest’s mainline scheduled operations have been negatively impacted.”

Of course, blaming pilot sickouts for your problems is not going to go unchecked. ALPA immediately shot back saying it wasn’t true, and for the millionth time in the last couple years, the Northwest pilots were angry at management.

Now let’s come back to this week. Doug Steenland, head of the airline, has been on the summer apology tour. He says the airline is sorry, and he’s changing his tune in regards to the pilot situation. According to an interview published in the Detroit Free Press, the airline is recalling laid-off pilots, hiring new ones, cutting flight schedules, and modifying union work rules to allow for more schedule flexibility.

Does this sound like the moves of an airline that is running a poor operation solely due to pilot sickouts and weather problems? No way. But more importantly, do customers (which I have horribly stereotyped in my picture as a bunch of Vikings) care? Again, no way.

See, for some crazy reason, it doesn’t matter to most of the world why their flight was canceled. All they know is that their flight is NOT getting them where they need to go and they’re going to miss their cousin’s wedding, their nephew’s Bar Mitzvah, or their dog’s graduation from training school (clearly, I’ve lived in LA too long).

As a customer, when I hear Northwest blaming its pilots, I DON’T CARE. Just friggin’ get me where I need to go. Remember the summer of 2000 where United’s pilots actually did cause the airline to meltdown? Do regular customers care? NO. If you can’t get the plane where I need to go on time, I walk away from the airline regardless of cause. It took United a long time to regain some of those customers they lost while others never returned, and nothing would have changed were it management’s fault instead that time.

So now Northwest is finally saying, “Gee, instead of blaming people, maybe we should accept responsibility and fix the problem.” Congratulations on figuring out the most basic of things. The public will not feel bad for you regardless of the cause. If you blame pilots correctly, the public still won’t care. If you incorrectly blame the pilots, all you’ll do is anger your work group. Then again, I suppose morale at the airline couldn’t get much lower, so they probably didn’t have much to lose on that front.

The point is, as if I haven’t been clear enough, just fix the problem. Don’t bore me with why it’s broken. JUST FIX IT. Hopefully this round of apologies is a signal that they’re actually going to do it.

Just when you thought that United’s labor relations were the worst around, Northwest (no, not THAT NWA) always jumps out to remind you otherwise. So what did they do this time?

You’ve probably seen the national media has been all over them this past week as the operation has hit a brick wall with massive cancellations heading well over 10% of the scheduled flights. So what’s happening? Well the official line from Northwest is that it’s due to a variety of factors, “the most important of which are: summertime thunderstorms on the east coast and at several Northwest hubs, air traffic control congestion, and pilot absenteeism – which was 80 percent higher in June 2007 versus June 2006.”

Uh, pilot absenteeism? The pilots would beg to differ. In this news release, the pilots claim that it’s due to short staffing, which is more likely to be the case. Nothing like throwing your employees under the bus when it’s clearly a much larger issue. Some internal info I’ve seen shows that Northwest tried to run more flight hours with fewer pilots in June. When your pilots are already running close to maximums, I wouldn’t expect that sort of plan to work out too well.

So how do we know who is right? Actions speak louder than words. The airline has put together a long list of flight cancellations going forward. If it were a pilot sickout, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be canceling so far in advance in anticipation of it continuing that long. Sounds like it’s a scheduling problem and they know it.

If you’re flying Northwest, keep an eye out. They’ve canceled one of the flights from Detroit to Frankfurt beginning July 18. They’re also going to cut back flying by about 90 hours so they can increase pilot reserves. In addition, they’re rehiring furloughed pilots as quickly as they can, so they say. Does this sound like an airline that is plagued by a pilot sickout? I don’t think so. Sounds like an airline that got caught with too few pilots to me.

I feel bad for all of you who live in Minneapolis, Detroit, or Memphis. Northwest, the king of retaliation, has successfully fought off competition so well in those cities that your options are pretty limited. (Frontier may still be fighting it out in Memphis, but I’m ready to take bets on when that experiment ends.) So it was no surprise to see them at it again today.

Flash back to May 29. American announced they’d be adding three daily flights between New York/LaGuardia and Minneapolis starting September 5. Since LaGuardia is a large station for the airline, it’s not completely out of the realm of reality. But any time you go up against Northwest, you know it’s not going to be pretty.

Right now, Northwest owns the route with 7 daily flights. Nobody else even tries it. So when American came in, you knew it was time to sit back, relax, and wait for the fight to break out.

It finally broke out this morning when Northwest announced that it would be flying three times a day on the completely absurd Dallas/Ft Worth – New York/LaGuardia route. Oh, and in case you hadn’t figured it out, service starts September 5. Now, Northwest has absolutely no chance in hell of making this route work. They don’t have a frequent flier base on either end. This is there solely to push American to pull out of “their” market.

The fun part about this is that American is no slouch in the retaliatory wars either. In fact, they’re one of the few to actually have gone to court over it. (Read here for more info on that fun-filled case.) So this could be a test of wills . . . a battle of egos . . . a fight for ridiculousness. I can’t wait to see who blinks first. For now, enjoy the competition if you live in those cities. It won’t last long.