mke9499

Trying to improve bottom line apparently means cutting more jobs in MKE.

http://www.jsonline.com/business/fro...133655853.html

newsmanhoss

I predict that WN/FL will keep most if not all of their current service at MKE when the schedule is extended.

adamj023

Too many threads on here to keep track of and too many airlines.

Southwest is getting to be a much stronger player as it is merging and is also looking to expand even further. Southwest is a very competitive airline and one of those highly liked carriers for domestic USA travel.

After Frontier is sold off, Frontier will also be part of a much larger route structure and be part of one of those highly acclaimed airlines.

But mergers, slot swaps, divestitures, and acquisitions are all necessary in the marketplace and will continue to occur for the foreseeable future.

mke9499

Article from WSJ has comments from industry analyst. At a time when RJET is trying to build up hub at DEN, it appears they are not having great success.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...ntier+airlines

flyYX

You have to admit that Bryan made promises he could not keep. Plus, he stated that Midwest Airlines was operationally pulling in a profit. Once the Midwest name was wiped off the MKE map, any loyalty that was left disappeared with the brand. It did not carry over to Frontier.

I have a crazy idea here that probably will never ever happen... What Republic should do is keep Frontier as a token place holder at MKE and fly the most profitable routes until the C Series order starts coming in. Revive the Midwest name on an all new C Series fleet and replace Frontier in Milwaukee. The New Midwest can code share with Frontier if they want. I know... CRAZY idea, but it might work. I heard the C Series order probably will never happen for Republic.

mke9499

From the Business Journal:

http://www.bizjournals.com/milwaukee...g-more-on.html

MikeFromMKE

I'm not sure what profit you are referring to. TPC wouldn't have been so quick to sell if it were a profitable business. BB said he would try to restore the route map to its pre-2008 levels, and he tried and failed. Many new routes were tried and unfortunately F9 did not have the pockets to keep them going. I remain hopeful they can become sustainably profitable and grow MKE in the future, but they can't do that until they get more cashflow.

8C4IOW

What was said was that there was not a revenue problem for Midwest, rather a cost problem which was true.

adamj023

Frontier's assets are excellent to be pieced across multiple airlines perhaps.

They have a very modern fleet. Airlines like Delta have older planes and the acquisition of lets say A319 which they have acquired because of Northwest would make sense. They seem to be intent on acquiring MD90s because of the more modern engines. Perhaps acquiring A319s depending on the price could supplement that and phase out the MD88s.

Lots of senarios at play here. But Frontier seems to have a dream EQ base with very fuel efficient base when put on the right routes with a larger firm.

The A318's that frontier is getting rid of are very new. But smaller size.

Any ideas who these A318's will go to?

BlueHorseShoe2000

Bedford stated at the time of the Midwest acquisition that the airline was operationally profitable. Midwest wasn't generating huge profits but it was a big turnaround from the previous year.

As others had posted Midwest had a cost problem. That's why Republic moved so quickly to get rid of the 717s and put Airbus jets on the high volume leisure markets. This probably would have worked out well had Southwest and AirTran not dumped so much excess capacity in these markets.

I don't buy the fact that Bedford didn't deliver on his promises for Milwaukee because the facts tell a different story. Republic devoted significant resources in an attempt to build a more conventional hub in Milwaukee. They restored nearly every route Midwest cut and even added new ones like SAT, TUC, and SAN. It didn't work and it had little to do with the dumping of the Midwest name. To suggest that things would have turned out much differently had Republic kept the Midwest brand ignores the different economic and competitive dynamics at work in the market.

With one dominant airline, Milwaukee might be able to work as a small hub. It can't in a hyper-competitive market like we've seen the last few years.

Plus, having hub operations in medium sized cities doesn't work all that well anymore. Look at what has or is happening in places like PIT, MEM,CLE, or CVG.

adamj023

I agree. Frontier has an excellent modern fleet and lots of carriers today which are more significant and profitable even with older fleets could benefit by integrating Frontier's jets into their markets.

As far as their hubs, it all depends on passenger loads in those given markets. If there is enough capacity to go around, then perhaps a carrier should acquire the routes and keep less jets on those routes at times when the planes will be full by better matching passenger capacity with aircraft type. People still need to and will travel when they need to get somewhere.

I don't see Frontier going at it alone. I see the pieces morphing to help other existing carriers get better whether parted out or in full.

piotrkol1

I find it hilarious that Bedford views the the rising stocks as "a ringing endorsement of the business plan." Most of those are from corporate holders and hedge funds that will sell off their shares before you can even say "business plan." Get real, Bryan.

Still, you can't ignore the fact that the YX loyalty hasn't transferred over to F9 and I'm sure this makes at least SOME difference.

mke9499

Think so? Click on the "Institutions" tab.

http://investors.morningstar.com/own...or.html?t=RJET

tvnwz

Interesting that in the Big Milwaukee Airline War between airTran and Midwest----both lost.

knope2001

A couple of weeks of work / travel hell were capped by a crashed hard drive. So much going on to comment about

--On RAH looking to sell Frontier
I'm not convinced RAH will part ways with Frontier in the near term, both because there likely is no buyer now and becuase F9 will be a more valuable asset if they can demonstrate solid, sustained profiability. Just as many were grindingly pessimistic about the viabiilty of Frontier based on prior quarterly losses, neither should people think that the most recent profit mean that Frontier is healty enough to attract a buyer.

--On F9 MKE for early 2012
I heard employees at MKE talking about further March cuts, and while I think they were talking about employment, I would not be terribly surprised. It is true that front-line people are often (well-meaning) carriers of incorrect information because the rumor mill is rampant, and the March date is an easy one to latch onto because Chautauqua notified the DoT they would end their EAS markets then. And the throught is that all the RJ's will go then. It makes no sense to me for them to keep flying the other RJ markets in January and February only to end them in March, but it would hardly be the first highly quesitonable choice, and applying conventional logic to predict their moves is a fools game.

--On summer 2012 for WN/FL
I don't see Southwest able to do much integration and code sharing with AirTran anytime soon, and as such I suspect Summer 2012 will be largely status quo. Maybe limited code sharing sometime next year, but I think tomorrow's rollout will have far less broad-scale changes and integrations than people are expecting. And until there is real integration, I'll stick with my opinion that both MKE and ATL, and to a lesser extent BWI, will stay intact. They need the connecting flows to make both work, and they can't do too much in either city to mix. I would guess that very little of MKE or ATL capacity will shift FL to WN. So I think what is rolled out tomorrow is mostly more status quo.


More to say but not sure how much I'll get typed tonight, so I'll post this now...