I drew up a list of points but didn’t get them posted until now. In the mean time some people have already pointed out some of this stuff, so I apologize it it seems like I’m ripping off what other people have posted.

The prevailing notion of some is essentially “If AirTran is doing it, Frontier should be able to as well”. However MKE-west coast flights have different roles for AirTran compared to Frontier.

1. East-West Flow

AirTran’s Milwaukee operation is largely built for east-west traffic, and if they were to discontinue them, it would significantly impact results to BOS/LGA/BWI/DCA.

Frontier’s Milwaukee operation does not serve much long-haul east-west traffic, so trimming west coast flights do not especially impact the rest of the MKE operation.


2. Alternates to Nonstop Flights

AirTran has no good way to serve local traffic from Milwaukee to the west coast without flying nonstop. The winter schedule has a few connections via Atlanta, but ATL is far out of the way – about 50-70% more miles than nonstop MKE-west coast, and flights are generally around 8-10 hours. So if AirTran wants to be in MKE-west coast in any reasonable way, they have to keep the nonstops.

Frontier’s January schedule has several MKE-LAX options through the day, with routings only marginally longer than nonstop flights and coordinated connections. Here’s the January MKE-LAX offering:

6:00am – 10:26am via DEN (daily)
7:07am – 11:32am via MCI (daily)
10:40am – 2:27pm via DEN (daily)
2:25pm – 4:07pm via DEN (except Saturday)
6:59pm – 10:44pm via DEN (daily)
9:50pm – 12:16am nonstop (Thursday / Friday / Sunday only)


3. Flow from Key Markets

AirTran’s best launch point for west coast flights – geographically – is Milwaukee. Flat maps don’t do justice to how relatively “right on the way” Milwaukee is to the west coast for two key AirTran markets, Baltimore and Atlanta. So when the offseason comes and AirTran trims or drops nonstop west coast flights from Atlanta and Baltimore – which they do – they can still serve a lot of that flow west from those two key markets via Milwaukee. MKE is virtually right beneath the direct flight path from BWI to the west coast – BWI-MKE-west coast is less than 3% longer than BWI-west coast nonstop. And even from Atlanta to Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles, stopping in MKE is only 8.3%, 17.5%, and 24.6% longer than nonstop routing to those cities (respectively). The kind of flow that this generates really fortifies the viability of west coast nonstops. In the first quarter, when AirTran did not fly SEA-ATL nonstop but instead flew SEA-MKE-ATL, there were on average around 29 Seattle-Atlanta passengers on the SEA-MKE nonstop each day. That’s huge support.

Frontier has no such key market to the east/southeast of Milwaukee to fortify west coast nonstops. Frontier benefits somewhat the other direction, where MKE-BOS benefits from strong flow flying MCI-MKE-BOS, and increasingly DEN-MKE-BOS too.


One final point. There’s nothing to suggest that AirTran is actually making money on west coast nonstops during winter. They’ve said more than once that Milwaukee has made them money, however that is very different than saying every market in every quarter makes money. This past winter (Q1 2010) AirTran posted a solid net loss. It would seem unlikely that MKE-west coast was a profit center, overshadowed by larger losses in the rest of the AirTran network.

Would I like for Frontier to fly nonstop from Milwaukee to the west coast in the dead of winter? Sure, and I hope in the future they choose to. But it’s a whole lot more complicated than the notion that AirTran can do it but Frontier can’t compete.