Yesterday's news is playing well in the local MKE media:

(1) There has been rather little specifically bemoaning of the loss of the hometown airline. A lot more wording along the lines of "Milwaukee's hometown airline is now a part of Frontier Airlines", as opposed to "Milwaukee's hometown airline is dead".

(2) There have been lots of statements along the lines of "little will change" and "implementing the key parts of Midwest into Frontier".

(3) The tails of Frontier seem to be receiving a positive reception -- several newscasts even played part of the welcome-the-badger commercial, and the newspeople remarked positively.

(4) For several years, nearly every bit of Midwest Airlines news was framed with the AirTran buyout, the TPG buyout, and AirTran's subsequent growth here. Pretty much nobody framed the news this way.

(5) The quick news on local sponsorships and brandling such as the Midwest Airlines Center was a key move done correctly. Report after report from various local sources has mentioned this, and it is something of a reassurance to the community.

(6) As stupid as some think the cookies are, they are a touchstone to the "old" Midwest...their inclusion has been universally mentioned in local and national media. I just hope they spring for the EZ-bake ovens on the Airbus to make sure they are warm cookies. Don't underestimate that dfference.

(7) The Journal Sentinel print edition's front-page story featured the following graphic, roughly 5" X 7", which was about as positive as they could be and essentially free advertising:

http://media.journalinteractive.com/...er041410g1.jpg

They could just have easily used that space to convey the death of Midwest, to talk about having no hometown airline, to show the battle at MKE for dominance, etc. Plenty of less positive things could have been there. But that's what they chose to print.

(8) More than once source, including JS, has specifically worded it along the lines of "Milwaukee's hometown carrier is now Frontier" as opposed to "Milwaukee has no hometown carrier" or "Frontier is absorbing Milwaukee's Hometown Airline".


Anybody who reads my posts for long knows that I can be highly critical of how the media has treated Midwest Airlines for quite some time. There's an incredible ability to spin information by how it is framed and the word choice used. The spin we've seen them put on yesterday's news is remarkably favorable, in general. Not what I expected, and Republic should capitalize on it as best they can. It's not something the old Midwest was especially good at.