Thanks -- I don't mean to be gloomy Gus posting these, but when traffic was up there was usually a PR piece someone forwarded.

We've clearly come over the crest in MKE traffic, and it will be interesting to see where it settles in. The known upcoming reduction of connecting traffic on the horizon, plus potnetial further reductions in connections at WN/FL, will hurt numbers further. But I suspect that even if those reductions mean significant drop in total MKE volume, that local traffic pie has been grown signficantly in recent years and will continue to be.

The MKE stats do attempt to differentiate between locally-screened passengers and online transfers, but the numbers have always seemed kind of iffy and inconsistant from airline to airline....and now that they have consolidated the reporting of FL/FL* and F9/F9* into a single number for each, you can't even do an apples-to-apples comparison from this year to last year. Clearly when FL* was reported separately they listed zero connections, either to/from FL mainline or between FL* flights, neither of which was accurate. Not sure if that's being reported correctly now or not because it's buried within a single FL stat. FL* won't be an issue much longer, though. But then when FL and WN code share (which I assume they ultimately will before they become 100% WN) we won't know how FL-to-WN connections are counted.

Anyway...it will be interesting to see where MKE levels off, and what the future holds for WN and F9 in MKE. Lots of possible outcomes for both.