Midwest Airlines Midwest Miles - E-170 vs E-190

A question for forum members in the know:

I've been planning some trips to the East Coast cities and notice that all cities have E-170 flights, but no E-190 flights. Is this real, or are they temporarily listing them all as E-170 until they sort out where each type is going?

Yes, all East Coast destinations are listed as E170. Remember, the A319s are being swapped for the five E190s currently on-line. The only E190s you should see scheduled will be to rotate the planes through Denver and Kansas City.

With the remaining 717s being removed from service early next month, Midwest had to come-up with a temporary schedule that could be flown based on aircrfat that would be reliably available.

More Airbus and E-Jets will be added to the fleet in the coming months and the schedules will be up-dated accordingly. Flights to BOS, LGA, and DCA will almost certainly be up-gauged.

Thanks, Blue. So some of these flights listed as 170 will really end up being 190s, just not certain which, yet.

From what I've heard, they are covering the new schedule (November 3rd and onward) with E170's, including operational spares, until more E190's come. Speculation is of course that they are the ex USAirways birds.

I worked out the new schedule at home and don't have it here at work, but if I recall correctly there are 35 aircraft in the schedule (in addition to the RJ's)...5 A319, 2 E190, 16 E170 (an increase of 5), 6 ER3 and 6 CRJ. I keep meaning to do a new posting but work is pretty much sucking all the life out of me these days.

Other than aircraft changes, the only noteworthy differences I see are these:

--MKE-MCI is dropping from 6x to 5x. This could of course be due to Southwest's coming into the market. However I think it's just as much a byproduct of aligning the flights at MCI.

Today, the morning westbounds at MCI are this:

from DCA 8:20am ----- to 8:50am MKE
from MKE 8:35am ----- to 9:05am SFO
from LGA 9:10am ----- to 9:40am SEA
from MKE 10:25am ---- to 10:55am LAX

So westbound connections from LGA don't work to SFO, and eastbound doesn't work from LAX.

Those are being aligned in the new schedule so that SFO, SEA, and LAX all depart MCI (and likewise return to MCI) at close enough times so there are good connections between the west coast and DCA, MKE and LGA. But that means that the MCI-LAX flight needs to leave almost two hours earlier. And so it can't leave MKE at 9:00am like it does today.

-The morning MKE-TPA E170 moves from 7:30am to 9:30am.

Putting E170 on more former 717 routes is a cut in capacity, however if this is going to last into the winter, it's a good time to do it. When more E190's come, at least from what I'm hearing, some E170 lift will move to upgrade certain RJ markets, freeing up more RJ's for MKE-STL and other potential expansion.

Thanks, Knope, for your very thorough explanation.

Bryan Bedford was quoted in a recent interview as saying more Airbus and E-Jets will be coming to Milwaukee in the coming months.

Unofficially, I've heard that some of the planned expansion has been delayed for a short-time as Republic right-sizes the Midwest/Frontier fleet and acquires more aircraft. Apparently some of the aircraft additions have not come as quickly as previously anticipated. Just a few months ago, there were very strong rumors that CWA, BDL, and RDU would be on-line by year-end. Given the current aircraft constraints, that can't happen (it's probably better to re-start these routes next spring anyways).

I do agree that having the E170s on BOS, LGA, and DCA over the winter months will be fine from a capacity stand-point, although those three routes will probably be up-gauged ASAP to avoid giving AirTran any spill traffic.