If the price of oil continues to rise, I think there's better than a 50/50 chance that Southwest pulls down MKE-West Coast service this fall. That's especially likely if they begin dismantling the East-West hub.

Back in 2008, AirTran stated that their Q2 loss was mostly attributed to the the long haul flying in MKE. They may have a bit more pricing power now that Frontier is pulling out but it's already May and AirTran has likely sold a fair number of seats for the summer at lower prices already.

Southwest also made some cut-backs to their long-haul network in 2008.

Unlike AirTran, Frontier does have the option of getting MKE passengers to the West Coast through MCI and DEN. Given the short notice of these cancellations, I'm sure there's going to be some unhappy customers. At least they can still get to their destination with a connection.

I doubt anyone will jump on MKE-RDU.

Given what's happening with oil, in hindsight it might have been better to keep the Q400 fleet and deploy some of those planes to MKE.