Flight check-in message on www.midwestairlines.com:

No more award bookings at midwest.com
 

The following message appears when accessing award travel booking function:

It looks like midwestairlines.com is pretty much just for accessing existing FF account information. I booked a flight (at work via our online tool) and can access it on midwestairlines.com but cannot change seats today.

I've called into the toll-free number to check wait times several times this morning and it has been 0-9 minutes on every attempt, so that suggests no mass chaos this morning. MKE is running on-time, too, so it doesn't seem to be a train wreck.

As a MidwestMiles member, your account and miles will automatically be changed over to Frontier's EarlyReturns FF program, in the near future. However, if you are not a member of the EarlyReturns program, enrolling now will place 500 bonus miles in your new EarlyReturns account, which will eventually be merged with your MM account balance.

I really hesitate to do this because it means there are two accounts to merge then. I'm thinking when my YX account transfers over, the easiest thing is if all my flights, all my miles, and my elite status is all wrapped in my YX account. And that's the number and profile that survives in the Frontier world.

Some people will undoubtedly be in the circumstance where they have to combine their accounts, but I am thinking to not choose to put myself in that group for 500 miles.

(On an unrelated note, apparently if you accidentally click a smiley in the header...not within the body of the test...you can't edit it out.)

kiosks at MKE have changed
 

There seem to be a few technical glitches (at least from my perspective). I went to check in at kiosk by entrance to D gates at MKE today. Screen now reads Frontier and does not give you the option to check-in by name and destination as the Midwest kiosk used to (it asks for early returns number, conf number, or credit card swipe). Once I did use it, I got half way through the check-in process and it came up with a message to see the agent. Not really sure why it would not let me check-in, but this was not the first problem that I have had with this particular ticket. Earlier, it had dropped my seat assignment when the flight info on the reservation was changed from Midwest to Frontier by the system.

I've had multiple problems checking in electronically over the last 2 months or so. I am hoping that all of the kinks get worked out soon.

Thanks for the report, stockholm28!

That's a feature that is probably gone for good. I don't think most airilnes (any??) still let you check in with a name and flight number. I was always kind of surprised that Midwest never put tighter controls in because it was an easy tool to check up on people. I used it many times over the years (for purely benevolent purposes) to see if co-workers had checked in yet, or to verify what flight a friend was coming in on.

I have an itin in a week booked originally as Midwest which had the same seat problem, although my seat assignments eventually came back. I wonder if I'll have the same issue. Do you know if you checked in with the Midwest six-letter confirmation or the Frontier six-letter confirmation? (or neither?)


I think that once everything is booked as Frontier with the Frontier code and Frontier FF number the issues should be past. That's one nice thing about just being absorbed into the existing Frontier structure (versus them creating a whole new hybrid structure). Frontier kiosks aren't new, Frontier OLCI isn't new, frontierairliens.com online FF account access isn't new, etc.

I've had good luck with OLCI and kiosks, but up to this point all my travel was deliberately still fully in the Midwest world to avoid cross-system issues. My next few trips were still booked as YX (to get my FF benefits) and will be operated in the F9 world, so I'm anticipating stuff like you ran into today.

Obviously wanting to check in at the kiosks upstairs by the gate but then being denied was a pain for you. Was the ticket counter notably more chaotic than usual? Were they well-staffed for day one?

Thanks again for the info!

knope, When I tried the kiosk I used my credit card ... I didn't have my reservation with me so didn't know what the conf number was. My reservation came up and showed my seat assignment, but when I went to continue I got the message to see agent. There was no one in line at the downstairs check-in counter, so no problem there.

Thanks for the details. Glad the kiosks don't necessarily need the confirmation number like online check in does. Good luck with your delay...

MKE signage
 

Didn't take the airport long to switch signs over to Frontier.

Frontier added and/or Midwest removed:
-Ticket counter signage
-External signage
-Baggage claim
-Airport signage at the D concourse
-Kiosks

Still showing the Midwest name:
-Large sign behind the kiosk bank at the D entrance
-Title on the flat-screen flight info monitors near ticket counter

Also the flight information airline names still toggle Midwest and Frontier. I could see that continuing for awhile because until today flights were still being sold as YX* operated by Frontier.

The ticket counter is still the plain white wall with just a Frontier banner for the time being.

It was sort of remarkable for lack of hoopla. But on the other hand, if today's cutover had been a train wreck, it would have been a bad day to celebrate or brag.

How much longer will www.mobile.midwestairlines.com remain live?

How about a mobile Frontier site?

Voucher for delay and only one cookie?
 

My flight from MKE to DCA today was noticibly different today under the new Frontier brand.

1) The flight was overbooked by 4 seats. They asked for volunteers who would get $200 if they took a flight routed through Omaha. Evidently both afternoon flights to DC were overbooked. That seemed unusual.

2) My flight was delayed 2 hours due to a mechanical problem with the door. However, they gave everyone a $100 credit voucher for Frontier. That was certainly a nice surprise.

3) The exterior of the plane was still Midwest blue but the interior had been refitted with the green Frontier seats including the stretch seating at the front (it looked like first 4 rows had stretch). I also wonder if this is why the flight was oversold. I had originally booked on Midwest and I am pretty sure that the flight showed the standard configuration of 19 rows when I booked. When the flight was rebranded as Frontier, I got a notice that my seat assignment had been changed from an aisle near the front to a window in the rear. When I contacted Midwest to ask why this happened, they changed my seat assignment to an aisle in the front and it turned out this was a stretch seat.

4) Finally, I've flown this route twice in the last 3 weeks and both times they have given out only one cookie. I heard the flight attendent say "we're down to one cookie now" a couple of weeks ago, but thought she just meant that particular flight. I'm guessing the cookie quota has changed.

Thanks again for the reports...

Frontier is generally middle-of-the-pack agressive with overbooking, but for whatever reason they don't historically get enough volunteers to avoid the dreaded involuntary bump. The DoT doesn't count voluntary bumps against carriers, only involuntary ones. So perhaps they are being more aggressive in getting volunteers to avoid bumps.

Q2 stats for Frontier
#8 of 18 carriers for total denied boarding
#6 of 18 carriers for voluntary denied boarding
#17 of 18 carriers for involuntary denied boarding

Even that dismal involuntary ranking is only around 8 per day, but it's a big number relatively speaking. Compare their numbers to AirTran,which has far more denied boarding but nearly always finds volunteers. For the same period:

F9
32 total bumped passengers per day, 8 of which were involuntary (25%) That put Frontier #17 of 18 for involuntary bumps, the stat which counts. The moderately low level of total denied boarding doesn't.

FL
182 total bumped passengers per day, 4 of which were involuntary (2%). That put AirTran #4 of 18 for involuntary bumps, the stat which counts. The high level of total denied boarding (more than double what nearly every other mainline carrier bumps) is not a reported stat.

Overbooking in general causes hassles and delays, and some people are just as critical of either kind. But when you don't get enough volunteers, forcing someone to take a bump is bad. If they are more active on looking for and compensating volunteers, that can help. I was bumped once involuntarily simply because there was no seat to reserve when I booked, so when I came to check in they said "well sir, you don't have a seat so if everybody shows up you'll be bumped" (which I was) without asking for volunteers. I was apparently the last person who booked...at a high fare for squeezing on what I did not know to be a full plane...and was the one left behind. I'm not sure if that was still happening in more recent times, but it smacked of gate agent indifference and led to an involuntary bump when there might have been a volunteer.


That was a nice gesture -- one which can take the edge off of a bad situation.


Was this your first E170 flight with the new interior? I have two E170 trips in the next 10 days or so and am hopeful to get at least one with Stretch.

The existing E170 seats were most or all of the style with the rounded profile at the headrest. Do you remember if that style is being used on the new interior? Those seats feel okay but always look cheap to me.

I've heard discussed elsewhere that catering is now 1 cookie per seat to make sure everybody can get one but avoid waste. I've heard the cookie uptake is not so good on the legacy Frontier routes and waste is high. I think that is largely due both to unfamiliarity and the cookies being cold. If you know you're getting cookies on the plane you might skip the temptation to buy some junk food when you pick up a newspaper. And the cold cookie...well...we've talked about that more than once.

A tweet several days ago suggested that cold cookies are due to ovens not being systemwide yet but it will change. I hope that proves true.

Mostly Air reported several months ago, that would be coming soon.

knope, this was my first flight on E170 with the Frontier configuration. I fly fairly regularly between DCA and MKE and up to now, all have been on Midwest or Republic planes. The legroom with the stretch seating was very nice, but the seats seemed less cushioned and there was no headrest.

On my flight, they did get 4 volunteers for the overbooking. They kept repeatedly asking (at least half a dozen times). When they announced the compensation was $200, the gentleman sitting across from me said "they have to do better than that." He mentioned that his last AirTran flight from MKE to DCA was overbooked, but the compensation had been a roundtrip ticket. I've been flying the DCA - MKE route frequently and don't recall ever hearing Midwest ask for volunteers. I'm not too thrilled to hear that Frontier is more agressive with the overbooking.