MKE September 2011 Traffic -- Frontier back on top
 

MKE September traffic continues the year-over-year drop, and for the month of September AirTran's drop allowed Frontier to be back on top. This will be short lived as Frontier's cuts accelerate this fall.

Total traffic
2011 vs 2010
-6.2%
2011 vs 2009
+14.4%

Change by airline
-14.9% Frontier
-10.2% AirTran
-7.1% Delta
6.0% USAirways
8.2% United + Continental
9.1% Air Canada
9.5% American
30.1% Southwest

Market share
31.1% Frontier
27.3% AirTran
16.6% Delta
9.5% Southwest
7.0% United + Continental
4.1% USAirways
4.0% American
0.4% Air Canada

I don't include Southwest with AirTran yet because they don't cross-feed each other yet like UA* and CO*. (As a matter of fact I suspect that the Skywest UA* flight which took over a CO* MKE-IAH trip is getting double-reported under Continental and under United, but don't have the time to prove it right now.) If WN+FL were combined, their year-over-year totals would be off 2.4%. Although the loss of Skywest FL* is a blow to the numbers, the 600 weekday seats they flew last September were more than replaced by 742 weekday seats with mainline to STL, CAK, and DSM this year. Of course STL is on WN (not FL) but the total WN+FL is still off year-over-year.

As for Frontier, they might well be passed by AirTran again come October. And by January, Frontier will only be about 20% larger than Delta.

And so it comes to pass.

http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee...u&ana=e_du_pub

Here's the breakdown for October, including year-over-year changes:

pax........mkt share....pax chg....pct chg....airline
225298 …… 28.9% .. -35803 …. -13.7% …… fl
214309 …… 27.5% .. -40294 …. -15.8% …… f9
134137 …… 17.2% ... -8238 ……. -5.8% …… dl
85260 …….. 10.9% ... 25694 …… 43.1% …… wn
52917 ……... 6.8% …….. 751 …….. 1.4% …… ua + co
32621 ….….. 4.2% …... 1483 …….. 4.8% …… us
31414 ……... 4.0% …... 2030 …….. 6.9% …… aa
2471 ……….. 0.3% …... -115 ……. -4.4% …… ac
1005 ……….. 0.1% …... -692 ….. -40.8% …… other

Until WN and FL cross-feed passengers I'll count them separately. If you do look to their combined total, FL+WN was down just over 10k passengers in 2011 versus 2010.

Total pax count at MKE was down just over 55k (-6.6%) from 834,616 to 779,432.

The combined MKE market share for WN/FL is just under 40%.

I'm assuming a big chunk of their overall pax decrease is due to dropping the SkyWest routes.

Some, though the malinline CAK, DSM and STL flights nearly replaced last year's CRJ capacity. OO operated 23,550 departing seats as FL*, while FL+WN offered 23,002 seats to CAK, DSM and STL.

I think the reduced traffic is:

--partly due to lost OO seats
--partly due to much lower load factors on mainline flights to DSM, CAK and perhaps STL...traffic not growing to meet the increased capacity shifted over
--partly due to the year over year loss of DFW
--partly due to other trims, like MCI is 2x vs 3x last October

FL+WN had 1x DEN last October and had 3x this October, so all these other trims overtook that DEN capacity increase to show year-over-year drop.

A bit off topic, but here's some elaboration. Des Moines October stats show the first full month of CRJ upgrade to 717.

2010 Skywest to/from MKE
3715 passengers
114 flights
32.6 pax per flight
65.2% load factor

2011 AirTran to/from MKE
4241 passengers
124 flights
34.2 pax per flight
29.2% load factor

From what I've heard Akron has done a notch or two better, but not not all that much. I've heard mixed things about STL so far so I'm not sure what to make of it.

Even though added seats to DSM, STL and CAK very roughly offset the lost seats to OMA, PIT and IND, those lost passengers to those three cities were not replaced by lots of extra pax to DSM, STL and CAK.

That DSM is still in the schedule well into next summer (as far as the schedule goes) supports the idea that it's a placeholder until 717's can fly DSM-MDW with the WN code.

If everything holds as is, by January FL+WN should be approaching 50%. Here's the breakdown based on the weekday scheduled flights for mid January:

31.0% ….. fl
19.7% ….. f9
17.0% ….. wn
16.3% ….. dl
7.7% ….. ua
4.5% ….. us
3.0% ….. aa
0.7% ….. ac

I didn't make a point of adjusting for weekend variation, nor for charter flying. And of course this is capacity...not passengers...so if one airline fills 85% of seats and another fills 65% of seats, actual pax counts will vary accordingly.

Also note that (for whatever reason) in January, a few flights to LAS and Florida normally operated by FL are being operated by WN. So if the same numbers were run for January, perhaps it might be more like FL 35% and WN 13%.