There are a handful of regional airlines that I’m always surprised to find still in business. There’s Mesa, of course, and yes, GoJet, but one of the biggest surprises of all is Air Wisconsin. And now, it just lost its only regional relationship with no replacement on the horizon. Survival is… going to be a challenge.
Air Wisconsin started up flying commuter routes in the 1960s. By the mid-1980s, it had attracted the eye of United with its rapid growth in the airline’s backyard. In 1985 it started flying as United Express, and that contract lasted for 20 years before ending in 2006. That’s when the BAe-146 fleet was parked, and the airline went all-CRJ. That is also right around when Cirium block-hour data starts, so you can watch the airline’s downward progression ever since.
Air Wisconsin Block Minutes By Marketing Airline
Data via Cirium
This was the first time that Air Wisconsin should have died, but it pulled a rabbit out of a hat. In 2005, it invested millions in the US Airways bankruptcy to ensure that it would come out as a regional operator on the other side. Sure enough, it did, and that saved the airline. The deal survived the American merger until 2016 when death number two should have happened.
In 2016, Air Wisconsin’s ground handling business was wound down since it was no longer needed, and that American contract was approaching an end in 2018. In 2017, it was flying far fewer block hours than it had previously flown. This time, Air Wisconsin went back into the arms of its former patron, United. It once again became a United Express carrier starting in 2018.
Then it was time for near-death number three. In 2022, the pilot shortage was raging, and Air Wisconsin wasn’t able to fly its full schedule. The airline shrunk down further, but… it still had some pilots. And that’s the only reason American swooped back in and took the airline back on as an American Eagle partner one last time. The last United flight operated in June 2023.
This new deal with American was a five-year contract, so it seemed like it had secured at least a near-term future. But now, the end has arrived. The airline announced that it will no longer fly for American Eagle after April of this year. Here’s a look at the Air Wisconsin March route map before the pulldown began.
Map was created using Doughton Data Solutions service. doughtondata.com
I asked American for comment on this, and a spokesperson said:
American continually evaluates its regional network and makes strategic decisions that will benefit our airline and customers. As a result, we have begun reducing our schedule operated by Air Wisconsin starting in March, with the final Air Wisconsin-operated flights for American on April 3. We sincerely appreciate the hard work and dedication of the Air Wisconsin team over the past two years. Their contributions have been instrumental in supporting our regional operation, and we wish them continued success in the future. As we move forward, we remain committed to optimizing our network and ensuring the best possible service for our customers, and we’re working closely with our regional partners to minimize disruptions to our customers’ travel plans.
In other words, American made this decision, not Air Wisconsin. (As if you’d have thought otherwise.) And American, by the way, already has a replacement plan which it loaded into schedules this weekend. Envoy’s new Embraer 175 deliveries will do some of the flying, and they will also free up room in other markets so Piedmont can move some of its ERJ-145s to Chicago, at least temporarily. By June, American will go fully two-class in Chicago mostly on the backs of Envoy and SkyWest. It was clearly prepared for this transition.
As you might expect from an airline that just lost its most important partner, Air Wisconsin is trying to put a positive spin on this as a “strategic realignment” focusing on both Essential Air Service flying and charters.
The Essential Air Service bit is something of a head-scratcher. As of now, it holds exactly zero contracts. American has four, but only one is flown by Air Wisconsin: Waterloo (Iowa) from Chicago/O’Hare. Garden City (Kansas) and Grand Island (Nebraska) are flown from DFW and Watertown is flown from Philly. So really, Air Wisconsin has to start from scratch. It has started to apply for some contracts, however, and the good news is that American will remain as a codeshare and interline partner, so its bids will be somewhat attractive to the communities. It just won’t ramp up that immediately.
On the charter side, it sounds like it has already made some inroads before its primary business blew up. No doubt that it is telling the truth when it says that college conference realignment has increased the need for its services. We aren’t talking about big time college football programs here, but other sports need to fly more as well thanks to this travesty. (signed, a former PAC-12 fan)
All this being said, Air Wisconsin has a fleet of 60 CRJ-200s. The press release touts how it just retired all remaining debt on its aircraft, but these are some old airplanes. The newest aircraft in the CRJ-200 fleet is more than 20 years old. A replacement is going to be needed, and that’s going to require more debt or equity to make it happen. I’m not so sure how easy that’ll be.
Despite the sunny disposition in the press release, Air Wisconsin has to be nervous here. Then again, it has almost failed so many times, we’ll see if there’s yet another rabbit it can pull out of a hat to keep things going.
25 comments on “Air Wisconsin Goes It Alone as American Ends Eagle Partnership”
So the question is…will they be part of Airlines We Lost 2025? Or will it be 2026?
No, the real question is witch regional will be the next to fold as the number of them can’t be sustained based on the number of carriers that rely on them for feed. That is unless one regional flight is designed to connect numerous mainline flights.
No wait I have an idea!! Lufthansa group can buy them and use them for regional feed to AlItalia – ahem, I mean ITA – flights to/from Rome in JFK. I’m a genius!! Carsten, you can thank me later.
And they can call it Discovery Eurowings Jump Cityline Express
Independence Air 2.0 anyone? (Still one of my favorite airlines ever to fly)
Independence Air and AirTran were pretty good airlines while they lasted, especially for leisure travel east of the Mississippi River. Reasonable fares without the headaches (or Greyhound bus feel) of some of the (U)LCCs that have come to prominence since Independence & AirTran left the scene.
When I was going back and compiling my archive of past flights taken I rediscovered how much I also took airtran and also appreciated their flights and service too. And if you ever want a model for resuscitating an airline that should have gone out of business, then airtran is it in spades…
Yes. As someone with family an hour from ATL, it was great to have AirTran pushing DL on fares. Unfortunately, it’s tough to compete at ATL, and AirTran was the last airline that really tried to (Southwest dismantled the ATL hub pretty quickly after the AirTran acquisition). I’m not sure how one would define this, but in terms of “largest metro/catchment areas by O&D demand served by a single commercial airport”, ATL would have to be near the top of the list.
I really like ATL (both as an O&D airport and as a hub), and it has some airlines other than DL there, but I still wonder what opportunities there might be. I know that DL owns Georgia/ATL metro area politically and will do ANYTHING to stop another airport (other than ATL) between Columbus & Chattanooga from getting airline service, but the ATL metro area is big and traffic can be awful, so ATL isn’t that convenient for many in the metro area. I think it would be interesting to see an airline (Allegiant? perhaps a smaller ULCC?) try to initiate service at another airport in/near the ATL metro area… At the very least, it would keep the lobbyists, lawyers, and aviation bloggers busy for a while with all the drama, even if the effort failed.
AirTran did a great job to rise from the Valujet ashes and become quite a successful airline, but they also operated in a time where pilot + all employee hiring was a lot easier and the competition was not desperate for workers. Plus the competition had a huge product + price gap for a massive market segment.
Now we live in an era of cost convergence and 4 different product brands for just the economy cabin. There is a lot less space to create something different.
Embraer would be willing to have another “Porter Airlines”…. their new frames are not selling NA. Or is AW management too cheesy…???
Lol I see what you did there!
The ghost of Kerry Skeen and the self induced nightmare that was Independence Air (formerly Atlantic Coast airlines). Of course that idiot chose to go it alone after losing a stare-down with United. Air Wisconsin didn’t have that choice, it seems, so godspeed to them!
I’m still bitter because IAD was going to be B6’s second big hub after JFK but they eventually ran away screaming from the plunging average fares caused by Independence dumping a bunch of unneeded capacity into IAD. Oh, what might have been!
IAD could have played out so differently for sure. It’s wild B6 doesn’t even serve the airport. Still, they served it long after FlyI went kaput and could have grown if the market was really there.
My other alternative history is if WN had picked IAD over BWI for a big east coast base.
Express Jet tried their own branded service too, I remember lots of flights from Ontario. However I can’t recall if that was a supplement to regional flying for other airlines or a complete transition.
I worked for Whisky in the 00s; fantastic people. ‘Family’ is thrown around allot in corporate-speak but they backed it up in deed. When I was there…20 years ago…senior management didn’t hide that the future of the company was in ground handling…not flying. The relationship with UA was toxic; they wanted SkyWest metrics at Mesa prices and ZW was the whipsaw. The long term plan was to grow the GS business and wind down the flying as frames cycled out and pilots moved on to majors. If they had stuck to that plan Air Wis flight ops would have ended by now.
The Airways buy in was a sudden 180 and I was l was long gone by then. I suspect money was made as US shares appreciated in value post recession. Their go forward plan seems sus but let’s see if they can pull.off another miracle in Appleton .
I am curious about how much does it cost to charter a CRJ-200. Is it much cheaper than other 50 seater liket a ERJ-145? The CRJ-200 is like the least comfortable jet out there. The ERJ-145 is not a wonder but much better experience than the CRJ-200.
In other words, if I have the budget and need to charter a 50 seater. Why would I pick AW CRJ-200 over other ERJ-145 supplier?
Wany – I know nothing about this, but my guess is that with all of these CRJ-200s being based in Chicago, there’s a real opportunity to use them for more local needs. Less time required to position the airplane means less cost.
I have a family member who’s a major investor in the airline (yes it’s listed on the stock market under Harbor Diversified Investments) and that they do have a plan to get through this. Unfortunately after pressing him he didn’t share what but that it would be major restructuring
Wonder if they’d have any success converting a few into private jet config like Contour?
They have one of my favorite ATC call signs, “Water ski.”
JB – That was Trans States call sign. Air Wisconsin is just the boring “Wisconsin”
If I were ZW, I would go to United with the following offer: We’ll be you ORD at risk/summer storm late night clean up, extra section crew with up to 20 planes in house colors. They could be on call for the last bank or even later to clean up whatever got cancelled earlier in the day. Get as many people out of ORD late at night, and either bring them right back with pax from the out stations during overnight so you don’t have to RON crews, or have them operate 5-6am departures from the outstations back.
Would be an expensive proposition to basically be an on-call emergency airline. Crews still have guaranteed minimums, aircraft still need MX, airports still require parking fees (not to mention there would be nowhere to park 20 RONs at any major airport) and they can only clean up a small number of pax to a limited geography due to the range. Additionally, if they are operating late night departures out of ORD, they would need minimum crew rest in the outstation (usually about 11 hours) so they couldn’t operate a 5 AM back to ORD. And if mainline flights are canceled, the aircraft are already on the ground anyway.
Apparently Air Wis is providing the lift on BarkAirs So Fla to NYC Area venture. Let’s see if it’s a better thoughtout version of Pet Airways and makes money.
https://investors.bark.co/news/news-details/2024/BARK-Air-Introduces-Select-Flights-on-Larger-Planes-with-Lower-Fares-Uniting-More-Dogs-and-Their-People-in-the-Skies/default.aspx
How complicated would it be to strip out the seats and bid on Amazon Prime work like Sun Country is doing. Can fill a niche in upper Midwest markets where a 737 is too much (CWS, MQT, ALP, etc).
How much success will air Wisconsin have chasing EAS contracts, like the ones they put up for Quincy and Burlington IA?