New F9 routes...hints of future YX expansion?
 

Today, Frontier announced the addition of two new rotes from Denver: SDF (a Midwest station) and MSY (a former Midwest station). Both routes will be starting late spring 2010. That's lots of lead time, but both routes have competition already. Could MCI-MSY be far behind?

Also of interest is that Frontier announced seasonal OKC-MCO/TPA. I think that this is noteworthy because it was specifically mentioned at the DO this past June that Midwest would seriously consider adding point-to-point flying.

Here's the Press Release for F9's new service.

Take a good look at the OKC-Florida schedules and try to figure out where the aircraft starts and ends each day.

To me, it looks like Mon/Tue/Wed/Fri/Sat an E-190 starts out at MCO at 12:20 p.m., flies to OKC, does a 35-minute turn, then flies back to MCO arriving at 6:30 p.m. That's only two segments and the plane is only in service 6 hours and 10 minutes (including the turn at OKC) The rest of the time (17 hours and 50 minutes) it's just sitting somewhere.

On Thu/Sun it appears to start in TPA at 12:05 p.m., flies to OKC, does a 35-minute turn, then flies back to TPA arriving at 5:55 p.m. That's only two segments and the plane is only in service 5 hours 50 minutes (including the 35-minute turn in OKC.) The rest of the time (18 hours and 10 minutes it's just sitting somewhere.

Plus, after arriving back in MCO on Wed nite and Sat nite, the aircraft would have to be ferried to TPA to do TPA-OKC-TPA on Thu and Sun. After arriving in TPA on Thu nite and Sun nite, it would have to be ferried back to MCO to do MCO-OKC-MCO on Mon and Fri.

Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but can one E190 operate some flight segments for Frontier and some other ones for Midwest on the same day? If that's the case, you might see something like this.

(Hypothetical MCI service is shown in bold italics mixed in with already announced Frontier service from OKC.)

Note: I used the same block times for MCI-Florida as OKC-Florida because both OKC and MCI are about the same distance from TPA and MCO.

MCI-MCO

Departs Arrives Frequency
8:05 a.m. 11:45 a.m.Mon/Tue/Wed/Fri/Sat

(35 minute turn)

Orlando-Oklahoma City

Departs Arrives Frequency
12:20 p.m. 2:15 p.m. Mon/Tue/Wed/Fri/Sat

(35-minute turn]

Oklahoma City-Orlando

Departs Arrives Frequency
2:50 p.m. 6:30 p.m. Mon/Tue/Wed/Fri/Sat

(35-minute turn)

MCO-MCI

Departs Arrives Frequency
7:05 p.m. 9:00 p.m. Mon/Tue/Wed/Fri/Sat

RON at MCI

MCI-TPA

Departs Arrives Frequency
8:00 a.m. 11:30 a.m. Thu/Sunday

(35-minute turn)

TPA-OKC

Departs Arrives Frequency
12:05 p.m. 1:50 p.m. Thu/Sunday

(35-minute turn)

OKC-TPA

Departs Arrives Frequency
2:25 p.m. 5:55 p.m. Thu/Sunday

(35-minute turn)

TPA-MCI
Departs Arrives Frequency
6:30 p.m. 8:25 p.m. Thu/Sun

RON at MCI

Doing it this way would be a better utilization of this one aircraft, plus the plane would end up every night in MCI and there would be no ferry flights between TPA & MCO as it appears there will be with this new announced schedule.

Note: your could substitue MKE for MCI because MKE is also about the same distance from TPA and MCO as OKC and MCI are.

I noticed the times of the OKC-MCO/TPA flights and thought the same thing.

With more E190s being added to the fleet, it wouldn't be surprising to see Florida flying reinstated from MCI. Given that most of the morning MKE-Florida flights on be flown with A319s, MCI seems like a logical place to rotate the E190s through.

Honestly, I thought MCI-MCO would have been reinstated before and P2P flying was tried. Perhaps it will still come unless there are other plans in the works.

I wonder if Republic has decided what to do at MCI in regards to gates? Will Midwest move to the Frontier gates?

Midwest will be moving over to the C gates to join Frontier. The C terminal has immigration facilities for Frontier's Mexico flights.

Thanks. So my other question (that you probably missed in that big long dissertation I posted upthread :D) is:

If one E190 did a MCI-Florida roundtrip and an OKC-Florida
roundtrip all on the same day, could/would the MCI-Florida roundtrip operate as a Midwest flight, while the OKC-Florida roundtrip operated as a Frontier flight, or would all four segments have to be all Midwest or all Frontier?

They could operate as different airlines with the same plane.

Although it's possible that there could be aircraft swapping back and forth between Midwest and Frontier, I think this is perhaps more likely in this circumstance:

Except Tuesday/Saturday
06:20 DEN dep
11:45 MCO arr
12:20 MCO dep
14:15 OKC arr
14:50 OKC dep
18:30 MCO arr
19:05 MCO dep
21:17 DEN arr

Tuesday/Saturday only
06:15 DEN dep
11:30 TPA arr
12:05 TPA dep
13:50 OKC arr
14:25 OKC dep
17:55 TPA arr
18:30 TPA dep
20:35 DEN arr

Although the DEN flights are not timed for connections, there's plenty of local DEN demand for an E190 to Florida. The first nonstop of the day DEN-MCO and DEN-TPA both arrive after 4:00pm.

The other thing which makes me think this might be the direction is that there hasn't been any sort of ancillary new route press release. That might still be coming, but the added 5x/week DEN-MCO and 2x/week DEN-TPA are not a new route nor a big expansion, just another flight showing up for sale certain days of the week.

Not saying this is 100% certain, nor that they will never have instances with aircraft flowing between F9 and YX daily, but I suspect this could be the answer in this particular case.

It's also possible that a Republic branded E190 could be utilized for this type of flying. This would certainly make switching between the brands easier, although there would still be some complexities associated with catering, changing out things like in-flight magazines, etc.

Does anyone know if the E190s will be painted exclusively in the Midwest paint scheme?

MCI-MSY would work but MKE-MSY would not work. Not even on an RJ.

Possibility of MKE-SEA nonstop returning? Read YX tweet: