Travel News - Midway Airlines Announces First-Ever and Only Nonstop Service to Denver

Midway Airlines Corporation today announced the first-ever and only jet service between Raleigh-Durham International Airport (RDU) and Denver, Colo. (DEN). Introductory fares start as low as $199 each way to Denver, and service begins on Valentine's Day, February 14. Midway plans to offer two daily nonstop flights each way between RDU and Denver.

``We are thrilled to offer another unique nonstop service by adding Denver to Midway's growing list of destinations,'' said Robert Ferguson, Midway Airlines President and CEO. ``Denver offers our passengers significant opportunities for business and leisure travel, and we're pleased to begin this service just in time for travelers to enjoy the height of ski season.''

The full press release is at: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/010105/nc_midway_.html

Rock on! Apologies to you UA-lovers, but UA has really jacked up all the DEN fares. I would love to see Midway add more destinations to DEN and would really LUV to see Southwest there!

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Time..... is on my side.

No kidding! Almost everyone in DEN hates UA (esp. with all the bad publicity in 2000). Frontier really hasn't done too much to knock down fares; bringing Southwest back to DEN would be awesome. I believe we're the only city that Southwest has served in the past and then completed pulled out!


[This message has been edited by davohuang (edited 01-05-2001).]

For those of us not in the Denver area, can you tell us why Southwest stopped providing service there? Did UA run them out?

One major reason Southwest pulled out of DEN - they couldn't accomplish their 20 minute turnaround times. Taxi times, in particular, were too long. Even at large airports that they do serve (e.g., LAX), their gates are relatively close to the runways.

This breathless press release makes it seem like Midway just flew people to the Moon...I mean, it's great, but it isn't rocket science either!

Believe me, Richard.. if you lived in or had to use Denver in the Stapleton days and then had the "sticker-shock" of how prices went through the roof when DIA went online, you'd want to throw a huge party every time a discount carrier arrived in Denver. It's criminal how fares shot up there.

Originally posted by richard:
This breathless press release makes it seem like Midway just flew people to the Moon...I mean, it's great, but it isn't rocket science either!



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Time..... is on my side.

Southwest served Denver in the 80's, but while they had trouble with a 20 minute turn at Stapleton, the big problem was the Wright Amendment that prohibited them from selling tickets to anywhere not contigious to Texas from Love Field. Remember, at that time WN didn't have the Phoenix hub or their California operations yet, so to get anywhere on WN you had to get to Love, and the only way to do that was to buy one ticket from Denver to Albuquerque, and then another from Albuquerque to Love Field or to wherever your destination was. Many people did it, but as you can imagine this wasn't compatible with the WN "quick, easy, fast" concept. Plus they didn't want to get investigated for violating the Wright Amendment, so they just dropped service.
Later, when they took over Morris Air, WN flatly stated that landing fees at DIA were too high, and they weren't going to continue service. Same reason they don't fly to places like JFK or IAD.
However, in keeping with WN's approach of using smaller, less congested airports, there have been rumors of them looking at COS. The new terminal built for (mostly) WP must be quiet as a church these days--just what WN would like. Daze

I believe the landing fees reason, but for the turnaround -- can they turn around planes fast enough in Detroit? I know every time I've been to Detroit taxi time is at least 10 minutes. It's very frustrating when your 30 minute flight spends 20 minutes taxing!

Daze, it seems COS would be a natural fit for Southwest. Since DIA replaced Stapleton, my ski group has always tried to book through COS because it is so much easier to use (no shuttle to rent cars, no train from gate to terminal, ridiculously high fees added to car rental, etc.) and by the time you add in the extra time for all of that plus the fact that DIA is so much farther east than Stapleton, I'm convinced that you can get to the ski areas nearly as fast from COS. In short I would love for Southwest to start flying to COS and being from the Dallas area, I'm already used to figuring out how to book around the Wright Amendment! Anybody know of any other reason Southwest has not already expanded to COS?