Remember how I said there was no reason AirTran couldn’t try to build up Milwaukee on its own even after failing to take over Midwest?
Here it comes.
This morning, the airline announced that
they will begin deploying troops, er, bumping up Milwaukee flights just in time for the winter season on December 20. All those snowbirds will now have the option of flying AirTran to Phoenix once a day. Yes, US Airways and Midwest already fly this route, but maybe AirTran will bring down fares enough to help the Brewers actually get more than a few hundred people at their spring training games this year.
Oh, but that’s not all. That same day they bring back daily seasonal flights to Tampa and Ft Myers. I know they had Tampa daily last year, but I think Ft Myers may not have been as frequent if it flew at all.
And I (mis)quote . . . “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury like an airline scorned.”
1 comment on “AirTran Starts in on Milwaukee”
Just look at the flights they’ve added through May and into June. Midwest is just plain lost… Their 9 B717s are under threat of being taken back by Boeing. (Boeing owes Mexicana 9 B717s on a 25 aircraft deal and Midwest is on a month to month lease) The subcontracted Skywest and Republic flights make up most of their flights and strangely they seem to have a lot of aircraft remain over night in MKE which is very unusual for a supposed “hub”. A “hub” usually has aircraft overnight at outstations flying early morning runs to connecting flights out of a “hub”.
Pretty much Midwest is back to a commuter airline with very few connections to anywhere people want to travel. The supposed experts hired by TPG while they were certainly better than the Midwest marketing team didn’t have a clue of how an airline works.
The only remaining question is does Delta want to take on Midwest debt to grab MKE? Northwest prior to the merger had already written off their investment as a total loss. So far the Northwest/Delta merger as far as MKE is concerned with Northwest ticket counter now signed as Delta seems to indicate the decision has been made and Midwest is a lost cause.