It's the people at Midwest that focused on making the customer happy that made Midwest the "best care in the air".
TH wanted to build a airline that focused on the customer and he did it. BB focus is on CASM and he gutted the culture at Midwest. Big mistake. BB could have maintained the key employees to maintain the Midwest culture but he thought it was all about the "cookie".
BB sums up his thoughts about MKE customers...
The market share surrendered – mostly to AirTran – has seen a positive tick back as we’ve started to rebuild,” said Bedford, “and we see a share shift back largely splitting by seats in the market. More important for us, however, is the RASM which is a competitive advantage. According to the Department of Transportation second quarter 2009 survey data, on competitive overlapping markets, Midwest maintains a 156% RASM premium which is not surprising to anyone, except, maybe the AirTran guys. Milwaukee is not a destination market that you can stimulate by price. [/U][U]I don’t care how cheap you make it; you don’t go there unless you have to, so there is no reason price stimulation will be a competitive advantage. But what we do have is a 1.1 million – which, by the way, is the same as the population there – frequent fliers who are willing to pay us a premium to get on Midwest because they love that cookie.”
Where are Republic CSR, Pilots, and Flight Attendants getting retrained to the customer service standards that earned Midwest loyality and multiple awards?
answer: They aren't!
Last edited by n735; Dec 17, 2009 at 10:58 am