Originally Posted by
knope2001
Two things I noticed in the new WN schedule:
MKE-PHX drops from 2x to 1x as of 11/6. It does operate for two peak days each before and after Thanksgiving, two peak days before and after Christmas, and two peak days before and one peak day after New Year's Day. Other than those few peak days, it looks to be only 1x. That brings WN down to 10/x day at Milwaukee. Probably not conincidentally, the AirTran schedule shows the seasonal return of MKE-PHX in November.
The other thing I noticed at MKE is that MKE-MCI continues to be a business-poor schedule. Since cutting MKE-MCI from 3x to 2x early this year, the flight times have jumped around a lot, sometimes to useful business schedules and sometimes to not-so-useful ones. The new schedule pretty much keeps the times consistant from late summer through fall and into January, but they are not especially good business times. Starting in later summer, MKE-MCI are at about 1:00pm and 5:00pm, and MCI-MKE are at about 11:00am and 3:30pm. That pretty much rules out same-day travel either direction, and with no early morning flight either direction you're stuck traveling the night before.
Adding an extra nonstop around the holidays also seems to hold true for MKE-MCI-MKE and MKE-BWI-MKE. The additional flights are obviously targeted to connecting traffic and will be heavily booked.
When I checked award availability for a couple of routes within minutes of the schedule extension coming up this morning, I could see very good selection of flights, most connecting at MCI. Now, three hours later, those same flights are no longer available.