Trouble is that rolling out a new brand is terribly expensive and does away with the brand image already built. Frontier did not have a negative brand image and coming up with a whole new one would mean starting from scratch.

Using the Midwest brand for the combined airline would have been even more problematic because (a) Midwest was a much less-known brand, especially in the DEN hub which was (at the time and now even more) much larger than MKE+MCI+OMA, and (b) the combined new airline would always suffer in comparision to what the classic YX was.

I don't think that the branding...Frontier, Midwest, or new...would have mad emuch difference in what's happening in Milwaukee. In spite of what others have posted (especially on some other boards) the Midwest name was never a big draw in Wisconsin outside of Milwaukee -- YX was virtually always the smallest airline in every Wisconsin outstation they served through their entire history, usually by a large margin. That was even true in Appleton. That's not to say that YX didn't have loyal passengers in their feeder markets. Cetainly not. But even in Appleton, the outstation where Midwest had the biggest presence and biggest history, it was always an also-ran behind NW and UA, and when DL came into the market it quickly passed YX and took away the ATW-ATL segment with a nonstop RJ flight.

With the recent cuts to feeder cities, I've seen an underlying narrative from some that Wisconsin's loyalty to Midwest was squandered with the name change. That doesn't really square with history in my opinoin.

I do think that Frontier was the right decision, but I think they have missed the opportunity to really roll out a better Frontier -- both to Denver and to the former YX strongholds. Hindsight is 20/20, I suppose.