What the real problem is with the CS300 is that when you have certain routes that have a strong headwind then you run the risk that the range isn't great enough. I am a fan of Frontier, but not the current way it's being run. I dislike Bryan Bedford, I dislike the fact that they still call anything Midwest, and I dislike that Frontier jets/maintenance/employees are being moved to Milwaukee of all places. Denver certainly wasn't the most tax friendly place for Frontier but I imagine most people in Denver are unhappy about the operations being moved. I sure hope the 7 million people who fly out of Milwaukee every year are happy to have the A319's.:rolleyes:

Since when does age have to do with anything? Aside from that my age isn't listed anywhere on here as far as I'm aware.

I'm curious to know why you think this is such a bad idea? On paper at least, the economics of the aircraft look great. Fuel prices will begin to increase again as the economy improves and competitive pressures will always exist to varying degrees. As a result, it's absolutely critical for Republic to have a very economical and efficient aircraft in its fleet. There's a reason why other airlines are starting to pay closer attention to the C series.

As far as routes that need added range, I'm sure Republic will find a suitable aircraft to cover this trype of flying. They've certainly got time to figure something out. We also don't know if Republic plans to ditch the entire Airbus fleet or not.

I don't see this as a bad move at all.

None of the CS300 configurations at Bombadier show a 138 seat layout. How will they do it?

http://www.bombardier.com/files/en/s...01-IGK7-HR.jpg

So the real reason you dislike today's announcement has more to do with a grudge you have against Bryan Bedford and Republic than anything else.

Would you have been happier if Southwest bought Frontier? They were going to drop the name, eliminate the Airbus fleet, and relocate jobs from DEN to other locations.

As for things being relocated to Milwaukee, there were legitimate business reasons for why that happened. Besides having a state-of-the-art maintenance hangar as a result of the Midwest acquisition, the State of Wisconsin put together a great incentives package to get a lot of the maintenance and call center jobs to Oak Creek. It was far better than anything Denver came up with.

Just a thought that occurred to me, what if after all of the Airbus' are gone Republic needs more capacity? By having ordered the largest of the CSeries available they have nowhere to expand without losing commonality as one person suggested was so vital because that's how WN does it. Frontier had commonality too, sans Lynx of course but still a fleet of 11 planes can't be that hard or expensive to maintain. Oh well, it'll be interesting to see what comes of this.

The Airbus A320 series of aircraft are by no means uneconomical, and with the added winglets coming in 2012 (or maybe soon as a post-fab package) the airplane will become even more efficient. It certainly makes sense to look towards the future but at the same time who is to say the CSeries won't be obsolete by the time Boeing and Airbus get their respective narrow-body replacements finished? Sure fuel burn may be a large improvement now but then when Boeing and Airbus both spank the CSeries and Republic threw away Frontier's bargaining chip with Airbus what are they going to do then? If anything it would have seemed smarter to me to add another follow up order with Airbus and then as they start working on their A320 series replacement go ahead and become one of the launch customers and be assured of an early delivery.

I don't think it's the Airbus fleet that will cost Republic, I think it's the higher CASM Embraer fleet that will really be the trouble.

The real reason I dislike today's announcement is because of Midwest Airlines. I think Republic would have been better off to get rid of the airline and bring in Frontier jets if they really deemed it necessary to compete in yet another over-saturated market. Certainly diversifying hubs was absolutely necessary for Frontier as Denver has just been an all out fare-war between Frontier, Southwest, and United. While it was very much needed not to have all of their eggs in one basket I feel Milwaukee was the wrong place to put them, you have AirTran and Southwest building up there leading to yet another fare-war in the near future I'm guessing. I will say I think Kansas city is a great hub to have, being as centrally located as you can in the US and allowing for easier connections that don't go too far out of the way to get you to your final destination.
Happier... No. I wouldn't have been happier but at the same time Frontier would have been around for another two years in it's current form allowing Southwest to decide what they actually wanted to do with the brand compared to Republic where it's an "oh sh*t" moment when they realize they need to do something and they need to do it fast.

State of the art or not Frontier has had one of the best maintenance programs in the country if not the world. They've won 10 (or is it 11?) FAA Maintenance Diamond Awards consecutively, it's not like they were struggling in their current facilities. I suppose that's the only way Wisconsin can get people to come there, offer them a deal much better than any one else can. It sure seems like Republic has put more eggs in the Midwest basket so far, hopefully Frontier will get some eggs of their own and the brand will remain.

Kansas City is a terrible place to hub. Everyone gets too hung-up on its geographic location. The airport was not designed to accomodate lots of connecting traffic. Kansas City also does not have high O&D numbers or close-in feeder markets to support the hub.

Midwest's "hub" at MCI is more of a large focus city that caters to the big O&D markets and thru traffic from MKE. They've never ran a ton of connections through there.

Southwest has more of a true hub operation there, but even they have scaled back significantly over the last eight years or so.

Ever wonder why every airline that has attempted to hub at MCI has failed?

There was nothing for Southwest to decide. They made it very clear that the Frontier name would have been dropped. For better or worse, everything you like about Frontier would have vanished.

Republic stated today that the plan is to announce a brand unification decision within the next couple of months. However, that doesn't mean the Frontier and/or Midwest names will be eliminated. I disagree that Republic is having an "oh sh*t" moment as you claim. The brand unification is a major decision and Republic should take all the time necessary to get it right.

Being from Denver and a fan of Frontier, it's easy for you to simply dismiss the Midwest name and say it should be dropped. The Midwest brand, despite all of the bad press, is still well known and liked in some parts of the U.S. If Republic simply announced today that they were dumping the brand, it could create enormous backlash and cause significant ill-will. Competitors would pounce.

It's also worth pointing out that it's not just about Midwest or Frontier anymore. Both brands are now a part of the larger Republic operations. Milwaukee, Denver, and Kansas City will play important roles for the branded operations going forward.


So what? Midwest has won a number of FAA Diamond Maintenance awards over the years as well.

The decision to move heavy maintenance from Denver to Milwaukee was all about money. Republic got the Midwest hangar in MKE for next to nothing. The cost of just leasing space in Denver was several million dollars a year.

As for Republic putting all more eggs in MKE, there was a lot more to rebuild there than in DEN. It was critical to get larger aircraft in the leisure markets to recapture market share and compete effectively with AirTran and Southwest.

"I dislike Bryan Bedford."

Personally? Or on some other basis?



"I dislike the fact that they still call anything Midwest."

Why, because they no longer have the best care in the air? If the business model worked the old Midwest would still be flying.

If Republic offered jobs to the Midwest crews (and reportedly they did at Republic wages), would it be enough Midwest for you?

What if Midwest Airlines had bought Frontier, named the combined airline Frontier, but consolidated the corporate headquarters in Milwaukee and dominated the management of the combined company? How would you feel about that? That is basically what America West did with US Airways.

If the combined company provides as good or better service for as good or better of a price, how much should you care?

Oh, yeah, it would not have taken Southwest two years to figure out "what to do with" the Frontier brand. Southwest does not need a brand.



"I dislike that Frontier jets/maintenance/employees are being moved to Milwaukee of all places."

So far, it has been only five jets. Think of Milwaukee as Chicago's third airport ;).

If Frontier ever expanded out of Denver, their jets and crews would have had to go with them.

The illustrious Sean Menke tried to get heavy check maintenance moved to El Salvador, FCOL. At least it is being kept in-country and in-house by Republic.



"The real reason I dislike today's announcement is because of Midwest Airlines. I think Republic would have been better off to get rid of the airline and bring in Frontier jets if they really deemed it necessary to compete in yet another over-saturated market. "

An odd comment to make from someone already upset about the 5 Frontier jets that are flying Midwest routes. Republic should have brought in more A319s so they could park their "jungle jets"? Because "jungle jets" aren't good enough to take over the B717 and CRJ-200 flying they replaced? Wouldn't 136-seat A319s be overkill for routes flown by 99 and 50 seat aircraft?

Were you upset with CEO Jeff Potter in 2006 when he signed an 11 year capacity purchase agreement with Republic to fly E-170s (sans LiveTV) under the Frontier label?



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"None of the CS300 configurations at Bombadier show a 138 seat layout. How will they do it?"

They will use the 145 seat model, putting the first 4 rows at 36" pitch, and the next 23 rows, except the exit row, at 30.5" pitch (and call it 31"). A lavatory will take up two seats in the last row. The aft end will probably look like the 120 seat configuration with only one lavatory. (This is what seems most likely to me.)

The FAA Diamond Award is not a recognition of exceptional, measured quality of maintenence, rather it's a set of criteria any airline can choose to achieve or not. It's been a few years since I had an in-depth discussion with a friend of mine about this, but if I recall correctly it was things such as X percentage of people in a certain job had a college degree, X percentage of people in this other job had some particular professional certification, etc.

It isn't meaningless, and choosing to put priority on achieving this rating might be indicative of an exceptional focus on quality maintenance. Or it can be very much like "teaching to the test" when you know what questions are going to be on an exam. Some companies choose to make it a priority, or largely achieve it based on who they happen to hire. But it isn't a measure of quality output.

Both Midwest and Skyway received this award several times over the years.

I googled FAA Diamond Award and these are the hits on the first page:

Million Air Dallas
Helicopter Support Inc
Garrett Aviation Springfield
Alaska Airlines
Atlantic Southeast Airlines
Independence Air
USA Jet
Frontier
Kitty Hawk
ATA Connection

Yikes- that ought to be painful, no thanks, I'll stick with 32" on Southweat

Kansas City can work as a hub and has before. It has about 2.1 million, Denver has what? about 2.5 million yet three hub airlines. Eastern did well there until they went bankrupt, but that was not the fault of their hub in Kansas City, Braniff ran about 200 flights a day outbound, when they went bankrupt in 1989. The airlines can run about 10 gates behind security, Southwest does this, security takes 5 minutes to get thru. Midwest would have ran more flights out of Kansas City, but didn't have the spare aircraft. Kansas City can support a hub if Memphis, which is half the size of Kansas City, or Salt Lake, again a smaller city. Cleveland, Cincin are both of comparable size to Kansas City. Southwest has cut back some at Kansas City because of their build up in Denver and needing the aircraft for that expedition.

If that's the case, then they are nearly emulating the AirTran seating arrangement, which is 37" pitch in biz class and 31" in coach on the 737.

AirTran also has 717, which resembles Cseries in 5 abreast seating.

But look at the available elbowroom.

737 can be found at:
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/air...ps/737sec2.pdf
page 57.

Typical seatback 17,0 inches. Typical 3 seat block 59,0 inches, consisting of 3 seatbacks total 51,0 inches and 4 armrests a 2,0 inches total 8,0 inches. Aisle 20,0 inches, so 138,0 inches interior. Total interior width given as 139,2 inches, 1,2 inches for gaps at wall. There must be alternative options, like the 737-100 with hatracks page 53 that has 18,0 inch aisle and on account of this wider middle seats.

717 can be found at:
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/air...ps/717sec2.pdf
page 8.

3 seat block is 61,7 inches here. Clearly wider than the 59,0 inches of 737. The aisle is 19,0 inches. Since the 2 seat block is 41,8 inches, the seat widths are consistent with seatbacks 17,9 inches each and armrests 2,0 inches each. 717 could have 20,0 inch aisle like 737 and seatbacks would still be 17,7 inches. 717 would need 23,5 inch aisle to have seatbacks as narrow as 737 with 20,0 inch aisle.

Cseries can be found at:
http://www.bombardier.com/files/en/s...01-IGK7-HR.JPG

Total cabin width is quoted as 129 inches.

In economy, Bombardier proposes 20,0 inch aisle, 4 18,5 inch seatbacks and 19,0 inch middle seat.

Summing up gives 113 inches. Assuming 7 armrests a 2,0 inches adds 14,0 inches to a total of 127 inches. 2,0 inches for gaps at walls is plausible.

Cseries seatbacks are 1,5 to 2,0 inches wider than what 737 has. Cseries would need 28,0 inch aisle to have seats as narrow as those of 737, and 23,5inch aisle to have seats as narrow as those of 717.

Given a choice between 32 inches pitch and 17,0 inches hiproom on Southwest or 30 inches pitch and 18,5 inches hiproom on Republic, whose ticket would you buy?

LOL...if it weren't for speculation, these boards would be pretty boring. Thought it might be a tad early to declare superior or inferior seating comfort at this stage. Seat design is huge...what sometimes looks tight on paper is pretty good in perceived comfort, and likewise what appears generous in stats is sometimes squandered.