As the Skywest FL* CRJ's are pulled from Milwaukee, it appears the AirTran is backfilling two markets with 717...Des Moines and Akron. Both show up as 2x/day starting shortly after Labor Day.

Three other CRJ markets are completely missing from the schedule in September: Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, and Omaha. St Louis is not yet gone, showing up in the fall schedule still as Skywest CRJ but with all inventory zeroed out.

Des Moines and Akron were the two markets which Skywest pulled back from 3x to 2x quickly when service started in early 2010, and by several measuers Des Moines' performace is the weakest of the six FL* markets. But as others have pointed out, the other four cities (PIT/IND/OMA/STL) have Midway flights but DSM and CAK do not. So perhaps this is their way of maintaining a presence in markets like DSM-LGA and CAK-LAX until the flights until integration when the flights will move to MDW.

More detailed info in this thread, starting with post #13.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/front...d-skywest.html