Originally Posted by
knope2001
AirTran just pulled ATL-SAN, and also IND-LAX from their schedule. What's significant about this for MKE and Midwest is this is another signal of AirTran's intent to push connections through Milwaukee. Undoubtedly there are thousand of people already booked on ATL-SAN (both locals and connections) for summer, and some IND-LAX, who will now transit Milwaukee.
I'm somewhat surprised by this move. If your a passenger is the SouthEast part of the United States heading to SAN, a connection in MKE is not all that desirable. That's an awful lot of back-tracking and could add a lot of time to your total trip. SEA works well because it's so farnNorth and a stop in MKE is on the way from many of AirTran's key markets. SAN...not so much.
Perhaps this is why the second MKE-SAN flight suddenly appeared in the schedules last week.
Besides having to fill a lot of MKE-SAN seats with passengers that had intended to go through ATL, there will be less room for local passengers on AirTran's ATL-MKE and MKE-SAN flights. This is good news for Midwest.
Delta must really be turning up the heat on AirTran in ATL.