Not sure if this is fresh news, especially with all these links posted in several different threads, but it appears that the MD-80s won't be grounded until the fall, at least according to this vague article. I take this with a grain of salt, however, since who knows how schedules and flight frequencies may change in the upcoming weeks.
Lost in all of the discussion about the elimination of the MD80 flying is the status of the 717 seating conversion.
Last year, it was announced that the 717s would be reconfigured with 40 "Signature" seats and 59 "Saver" seats. The new seating was scheduled to be rolled-out in mid-August.
We're now about seven weeks or so away from the time the new configurations should be in place and we haven't heard anything from Midwest on this. No specifics on fare buckets, how seats can be booked, the cost to up-grade, etc.
With the MD80s now going away, I'm beginning to wonder if the seating lay-out as originally planned will actually take place. Midwest's management did say today that they will be going back to their roots by focusing on business routes. That could mean that there is a demand for premium seating and the 40/59 seating mix will stay. Assuming that Midwest still plans on flying to Florida, Phoenix, and Las Vegas perhaps there will be more, would the 40/59 arrangement be economical?
It seems very strange that no details have been released on this yet.
I was at MCI last weekend, and a Midwest CSR told me she had heard a rumor the 40/59 config was being put on hold. I didn't give it much credibility as company employee's do tend to gossip and spread unfounded rumors. Keep that in mind when reading this.
Here is Milwaukee's version. They do mention bankruptcy as a possiblity too.
I'm still baffled about how to interpret this article. On one hand there seems to be a dooming sense of urgency to stop the bleeding immediately, and filing for bankruptcy is also one of several options on the table, but then Hoeksema goes on to say, "The revised [affected md-80s]routes will likely take effect from mid-August through mid-September." This would certainly be good news for some of us leisure traffic flying out to the West Coast throughout the peak season, but I'm wondering how they can afford to wait nearly 2 months to implement these changes.
I was at MCI last weekend, and a Midwest CSR told me she had heard a rumor the 40/59 config was being put on hold. I didn't give it much credibility as company employee's do tend to gossip and spread unfounded rumors. Keep that in mind when reading this.
Midwest should keep 100% 2x2 seating in all their aircraft. After all this restructuring is over with, I wish Midwest would consider looking at Embraer for all their aircraft needs. Embraer cabin design does not allow for a middle seat. Plus they have short, medium and long range aircraft.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by coolguy45
I'm still baffled about how to interpret this article. On one hand there seems to be a dooming sense of urgency to stop the bleeding immediately, and filing for bankruptcy is also one of several options on the table, but then Hoeksema goes on to say, "The revised [affected md-80s]routes will likely take effect from mid-August through mid-September." This would certainly be good news for some of us leisure traffic flying out to the West Coast throughout the peak season, but I'm wondering how they can afford to wait nearly 2 months to implement these changes.
It's going to take Midwest some time re-allign flying and accomodate passengers on affected flights. Plus, peak summer flying begins to drop-off in mid August as kids start going back to school. That's actually a good time to start phasing out the MD80s.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by flyYX
Midwest should keep 100% 2x2 seating in all their aircraft. After all this restructuring is over with, I wish Midwest would consider looking at Embraer for all their aircraft needs. Embraer cabin design does not allow for a middle seat. Plus they have short, medium and long range aircraft.
It would be great if Midwest could keep an all 2x2 seating on the 717s. However, I wouldn't hold my breath. Unfortunately, there are not enough people willing to pay for the extra comfort these days. There is definately demand for premium seats and Midwest will still be able to capture these customers, especially on business heavy routes like LGA, DCA, and DFW. However, having a mixed seating arrangement will allow Midwest to reduce CASM further and still be able to offer low fare buckets for leisure travel as well.
Hopefully that can get creative and offer some more on-board perks, such as power ports, etc. This would be a nice addition, especially if the 717s will be on longer stage lengths.
I really wish Midwest would have had an MD80 replacement by now. Yet, it's not like they haven't tried. Midwest has been talking about new aircraft for several years now. They were unable to obtain financing for new 737s or A320s, so the focus was shifted to acquiring late model used aircraft. Again, favorable finacing couldn't be obtained. It's the same story with the EMB140 order Skyway placed back in 2001. As bad as things are for Midwest, im some respects it's almost a blessing they didn't place a big MD80 replacement. That would have required a big cash outlay. Who knows what condition Midwest would be in today if they gave up all that cash. I suspect they may have already been in Chapter 11 had that happened.
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Northwest is cutting 14 757's and A320's. Midwest ought to try and pick up a couple A320's and some NW A320 pilots using their new found relationship. Just a thought.
Northwest is cutting 14 757's and A320's. Midwest ought to try and pick up a couple A320's and some NW A320 pilots using their new found relationship. Just a thought.
One potential problem is that some of NWA's Airbi's are on the older side. I believe it's been discussed on the NWA forum that some of their parkings are intended to avoid heavy mx (since they dumped a lot of their unfavorable leases already in BK).
As for the Emb's, aren't those in pretty high demand? Would it be possible to even have those by next summer?
Kind of surprised they won't keep a few MD's around. You would the charter service is profitable enough? Also too bad they wasted the time and money in getting the 2 extra MDs recently, and changing from cloth to leather (I liked those cloth seats anyway...).
Hasn't the feeling been that YX isn't as cash-poor as many think? Maybe this is an older thought, or I'm way off-base, just in the back of my head.
Wonder if OMA would have increased presence without the MDs, to provide stop-overs to the west coast. Adding stop-over flights is kinda getting back to roots I remember going to LGA via GRR as a kid
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Quote:
Originally Posted by YX802
I was at MCI last weekend, and a Midwest CSR told me she had heard a rumor the 40/59 config was being put on hold. I didn't give it much credibility as company employee's do tend to gossip and spread unfounded rumors. Keep that in mind when reading this.
Uh-oh, if true this can't be good I think the MD-80 busines is just the tip of the iceberg as it were. Failing to follow-through with the planned seating change is indicative of greater changes to come. Chapter 11 is a distinct possibility.
What is Midwest? Now that the 80s will soon be gone, any pretense of being anything other than a regional player should be dispensed with. Perhaps a return to the name "Midwest Express".
Here's the thing, Allegiant flys the MD-80s, and Allegiant is highly profitable. Now you could argue that Allegiant has a very specific business model,i.e. point to point, liesure market , low-cost a la carte, and you'd be right, but, Allegiant has a low cost structure as well.
TPG is going to be gunning for cost; for certain the next step will be making a run at employee salaries accross the board. So how does TPG whack mainline pay? Not good.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hazelrah
Uh-oh, if true this can't be good I think the MD-80 busines is just the tip of the iceberg as it were. Failing to follow-through with the planned seating change is indicative of greater changes to come. Chapter 11 is a distinct possibility.
What is Midwest? Now that the 80s will soon be gone, any pretense of being anything other than a regional player should be dispensed with. Perhaps a return to the name "Midwest Express".
Here's the thing, Allegiant flys the MD-80s, and Allegiant is highly profitable. Now you could argue that Allegiant has a very specific business model,i.e. point to point, liesure market , low-cost a la carte, and you'd be right, but, Allegiant has a low cost structure as well.
TPG is going to be gunning for cost; for certain the next step will be making a run at employee salaries accross the board. So how does TPG whack mainline pay? Not good.
Allegiant is in a league of their own. It is a travel agency first. They put together travel packages that include their own air charter service. They get a lot of ancillary income that Midwest normally doesn't get. You really can't compare the two airlines.
Last edited by flyYX; Jun 22, 08 at 2:01 pm.
Reason: fat finger error
What is Midwest? Now that the 80s will soon be gone, any pretense of being anything other than a regional player should be dispensed with.
Midwest has never been anything but a "regional player", with or without the M80s. They will still flying coast-to-coast and have transcon 1-stop and connecting flights over MCI do now. But they did not make Midwest a national player.
What the retirement of the M80's does is reduce Midwest's presence in the high-volume junk yield markets at Milwaukee.
The first two M80's were added nearly 20 years ago to fly nonstop to California, and it consistantly lost money for years. In the late 90s Midwest decided to add more M80's to the fleet to increase capacity in key business markets at Milwaukee. It was their growth plan at the time. The M80's were to replace DC9 and D9S in Milwaukee business markets, and those aircraft were instead to be used at the new Indianapolis hub and for new expansion at Kansas City. The M80's proved to be too large for many MKE business markets at the time, especially at the fares needed to support 2x2 seating. And when Indianpolis failed and some Kansas City expansion worked poorly, the DC9/D9S aircraft came back to Milwaukee.
The excess M80 capacity, instead, moved into leisure markets. Where they were hard to fill in off-peak times to places like Dallas, they were readily filled to places like Orlando and Phoenix. After 9/11 they moved even more M80 aircraft to leisure routes. Some might be surprised to find that MKE-LAS, Midwest's highest volume market with 4x M80/day, was nothing but a six-day-a-week red eye market until shortly after 9/11 when it saw its first daylight flight.
The problem with all this new leisure flying was that fares were nowhere near what 2x2 seating needed to break even. Hence the birth of Saver. The improved economics of 2x3 made these leisure markets more viable. But all through this, the core of their business and their loyal traffic were the business markets. The high-volume markets generated huge traffic grown and big revenue growth, but they did not represent the core Midwest frequent traveler.
Certainly there are some business travelers to California, Arizona, Florida and Las Vegas. However Midwest will almost certainly still serve those marekts. And except for LAX and seasonal nonstops to SFO and SEA, they will likely continue to fly nonstop to current destinations....just with fewer seats on a more efficient aircraft. And if that means that people who won't buy their tickets to Florida unless the fare is under $200 round trip fly on another carrier, so be it.
I'd be a lot more concerned if Midwest had chosen to drop Dallas, Atlanta, Boston and Washington and instead moved those aircraft to more flights to Florida, the west, and Mexico. That would be a true shift of this airline.
Lost in all of the discussion about the elimination of the MD80 flying is the status of the 717 seating conversion.
Last year, it was announced that the 717s would be reconfigured with 40 "Signature" seats and 59 "Saver" seats. The new seating was scheduled to be rolled-out in mid-August.
We're now about seven weeks or so away from the time the new configurations should be in place and we haven't heard anything from Midwest on this. No specifics on fare buckets, how seats can be booked, the cost to up-grade, etc.
With the MD80s now going away, I'm beginning to wonder if the seating lay-out as originally planned will actually take place. Midwest's management did say today that they will be going back to their roots by focusing on business routes. That could mean that there is a demand for premium seating and the 40/59 seating mix will stay. Assuming that Midwest still plans on flying to Florida, Phoenix, and Las Vegas perhaps there will be more, would the 40/59 arrangement be economical?
It seems very strange that no details have been released on this yet.
Will be interesting to see what happens. Perhaps there are no details because there is no decision what will happen. The page on the YX website detailing "Midwest Class" I think is fairly descriptive, but hasn't been updated since May, and obviously a lot has changed.
Could we see a mix of "Midwest Class" and Signature Service B717s? The latter would seem to make the most sense for the more traditional business destinations (LGA, BOS, DCA), while the 99 seater might be better for routes like MKE-MCI, MCO and some "mixed" destinations.
Any thoughts on what will happen to DEN? That one can be tough with the 717 in the summer (old config would have weight restrictions). Do they throw in the towel to F9 and UA?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mkenwayx
Will be interesting to see what happens. Perhaps there are no details because there is no decision what will happen. The page on the YX website detailing "Midwest Class" I think is fairly descriptive, but hasn't been updated since May, and obviously a lot has changed.
Could we see a mix of "Midwest Class" and Signature Service B717s? The latter would seem to make the most sense for the more traditional business destinations (LGA, BOS, DCA), while the 99 seater might be better for routes like MKE-MCI, MCO and some "mixed" destinations.
Any thoughts on what will happen to DEN? That one can be tough with the 717 in the summer (old config would have weight restrictions). Do they throw in the towel to F9 and UA?
I remember going to LGA via GRR as a kid 
