rrz518 and dudster, you both make good points. i avoid the detroit area except when connecting on NW to the west coast, so i'm not familiar witht ehgeograpics of the area. but it sounds like the whole DCA/IAD problem. for years washingtonians wouldn't drive past a perfectly good airport (DCA) to get to IAD. Of course DCA was supposed to close when DCA opened, but that a whole other subject.

FL and WN don't really compete in the TOL/DTW market. FL concentrates on ATL and Florida markets, WN goes to MDW and STL to connect south. Looks to me like WN would be better for the midwest, FL for the south.

Dudster makes the point that FL didn't do much advertising in the DTW area. WN is very good at getting customers to use secondary airports. FL should have been able to drive high yield last minute traffic down 75 (say what you want, but it's better than 71 between CLE-CMH, it's got 3 lanes each way!), but for some reason was unable to convince those getting gouged by NW at DTW to make the trip.