Originally Posted by
BlueHorseShoe2000
knope...I know Midwest has previously flown Moline (from both MKE and MCI), Traverse City, and Cincinnati.
I'm not too familiar with all of the SkyWay flying that has operated in the past so I was wondering if you could provide the history of what happened with these stations. Could any of these destinations work for Frontier from MKE and/or DEN, perhaps seasonally (TVC)?
I do know that CVG was flown twice daily for a number of years and was yanked around 2005 or so when many thought SkyWay would take over the Delta Connect FRJ flying. The fact that this route never came back seems to indicate it wasn't a strong performer.
I don't have my timetables handy to get exact dates, so some dates will be swagged a little bit. These markets were all Beech 1900 unless otherwise noted.
Moline
MLI came onboard in 1998 or early 1999, originally with flights to both MKE and MCI. It was a bridge between the two systems in an effort to expand Skyway to MCI, with Kansas City-Little Rock as the other market. MLI had 2x/day to MCI and 3x/day to MKE. The Kansas City thing didn't work out too long -- I think it ended in 2000. At the time Air Midwest was still flying point-to-point stuff out of MCI, so MCI-LIT went up against them. MLI-MKE carried pretty decent loads, although when fare information eventually came out it turned out to be mostly low-fare traffic. Moline was 4x/day but was cut in 2002 after the 9/11 and recession shock.
Cedar Rapids
CID actually has two incarnations on Midwest. Actually before Midwest there's history of CID-MKE...it was one of the original Northwest J31 markets in the late 80 hub operation, flying Waterloo-Cedar Rapids-Milwaukee. Midwest came in to CID the first time with the original Skyway operated by Mesa a few years later. It wasn't one of the original markets in 1989, but came in 1991 or so flying twice daily MKE-CID-OMA. That was years before Midwest mainline came to Omaha. When Midwest and Mesa cut ties in 1994, Cedar Rapids was not a market that the new Skyway (YX-owned Astral Aviation) replaced. Not long after Midwest themselves came into Omaha.
CID's round two came in 2000 if I recall correctly, and it was added on the heels of successful loads in Moline. It was 3x/day nonstop eastbound, and westbound they linked it with Moline to be 4x/day as they often did in those days. Instead of two nonstops at 9:45pm, one to each city, they sent one flight at 7:45pm flying MKE-CID-MLI, and another at 9:45 flying MKE-MLI-CID. Cedar didn't generate nearly the traffic that Moline did, and it was gone by mid 2001.
By the time these markets started, both Moline and Cedar Rapdis rarely saw turboprop service anymore, and 19-seat aircraft like the BE1 were antiquated and unattractive...especially for a brand-new airline trying to make a name for themselves.
Traverse City
TVC was a seasonal station for a handful of years in the mid-90's, flying 1x/day during summer. Rhinelander started the same way, but in both cases that seasonal flying had stopped for at least a season or two when those stations returned as "real" cities later on.
Traverse City came "for real" in 1998, in part to fortify Escanaba. Like Moline and Cedar Rapids, Marquette responded to wonderfully when service was added in 1997, but sister market Escanaba never turned out as well as the original. So after about 6 months of weak ESC results (it was not Essential Air Service back then -- Mesaba was also in ESC) they added Traverse City to the mix flying MKE-TVC-ESC. Traverse did fairly well and carried a reasonable amount of local traffic especially in summer, but it was another one of those markets where the Beech 1900 eventually left Midwest in the dust competitively. Like Moline, it was cut after the 9/11 shock and recession.
Cincinnati
CVG came in about 1996 or so and always performed reasonably well even amidst the Delta M88's and Comair CRJ's it competing against. A key niche for them was having an early-morning CVG-MKE trip around 7:15am and an evening CVG-MKE trip around 6:30pm. The Delta hub at CVG banks put the first CVG-MKE trip around 10:00am, and the last MKE-CVG trip around 5:00pm. That early-morning CVG-MKE was often the fullest trip of the day.
CVG is a very curious market to me in that it has been cut back so much that I wonder where the local traffic went, and if YX/F9 returned if it would come back. Delta is down to 150 seats per day in a market that peaked at around 700, and while obviously there's far less connecting traffic in CVG than there once was, this seems remarkable. I also wonder how much Dayton traffic is surrogate Cincinnati traffic. With the DL FF share I'm sure some YX FF junkies used CVG more often, but that's almost over. If they return to CVG will it kill DAY?
Out of time for more comments right now...maybe more later.