BlueHorseShoe2000

Midwest is once again ending non-stop service between OMA-LAX effective January 6, 2008. It's too bad as this route should have had a lot of potential (at least on paper). Unfortunately, Midwest has never been able to get much traction in the OMA market outside of the MKE and DCA flights.

lebowski2222

They never give anything time enough time to build.

The thing that killed this route was no connecting traffic to support it

It seems like things were going a lot smoother for YX when AirTran was close in the Hostile takeover, now it seems like ever since TPG/NWA got in the picture, it's been downhill

Wonder what they will do with this plane?

Nimrod

Probably park it and install the new seat config.

BlueHorseShoe2000

OMA-LAX has been running for over six months now and has been performing very poorly, especially this fall. The route was designed to capture all O&D passengers, which is usually much, much more lucrative than connecting traffic. Personally, I'm curious as to how much of the traffic was leisure vs. business oriented. That could make a huge difference in the financial performance of the route.

As for the plane, I'm guessing Midwest will do some maintenance work, beef-up warm-weather seasonal flying, or let the plane sit idle for part of the day (January is one of the weakest travel months of the year).

BlueHorseShoe2000

The new seats aren't suppose to be installed until Q3 FY08.

flyYX

It seems OMA will never pan out for YX in the way they would hope it would. I know people in OMA love YX but there must not be enough of them to fill planes or fares on other airlines are more competitive than YX. YX should drop OMA as a focus city and look somewhere else.... Maybe PIT.

pickinp

I live in OMA, and would love to fly YX all the time, however most times they are just more expensive. I am sad to see this routing go, as I was hoping that YX would be adding more OMA options.

knope2001

Since the end of summer, OMA-LAX has regularly averaged right about 50% load. Until just a few days ago it was still in the schedule, and I was starting to wonder if perhaps there was some sort of commitment or subsidy in exchange for keeping it at least X months.

Certainly it made it more difficult to fill the aircraft relying just on point-to-point traffic (although OMA-DCA does just fine with all point-to-point). But another issue is that there's just a single flight, and OMA-LAX connections are problematic on Midwest. Were they hubbed at Denver too, and offered a few connecting options at different times of day, it may have done better for them.

Of all the new and expanded routes added this year, OMA-LAX was the clear lightweight in traffic. Being only local traffic means yields were probably decent, however it's very hard ot overcome a 50% load factor. And even next-day fares OMA-LAX were in the $200's, so last-minute business travel was not earning them big bucks.

As for other new, expanded, or upgraded routes, the next one to worry about in my opinion is MKE-SEA. Traffic was incredible all summer, but in the past weeks more than a few flights have gone out with 45-75 people onboard. We may have another SFO here. Actually, historic traffic between MKE and SEA / SFO has Seattle bottoming out worse in the offseason than San Francisco.

Milwaukee average daily boardings by quarter (most recent 12 months)
Q1
SFO 104
SEA 57

Q2
SFO 171
SEA 108

Q3
SFO 136
SEA 137

Q4
SFO 91
SEA 84

It's a bit more complicated than this, of course. Other factors include how much traffic is up for grabs in repective connecting markets, and how much other airlines have a hold on their share. SFO originating traffic is pretty UA-loyal even in connecting markets like this, where SEA is a little more open. And these stats are all prior to the first nonstop MKE-SEA trips (they are up through 3/31/07) and nonstop flights usually grow traffic somewhat. But Seattle as a year-round viable nonstop MKE route is not a slam dunk in spite of how well it does in the summer. I'd be an advocate of swapping the roles of SFO and SEA. Run MKE-MCI-SEA 1x/day with the M80 all year and do MKE-SEA nonstop for 6 or 7 months. Make MCI-SFO 717 and keep MKE-SFO nonstop year round. We'll see, I guess.

On the CRJ side, most new and expanded markets have done pretty well. Austin is a little slow to get started, but Midwest should see a boost as ExpressJet pulls back. CMH and PIT are perhaps a bit overserved, but they seem to be making adjustments to help that. Those are high-fare destinations so they might be offset by yield. A real test, of course, will be the offseason. MKE-RDU, for example, did well all summer and into fall. Will it justify three trips all year? We'll see, I guess.

BlueHorseShoe2000

I took the MKE-SEA flight yesterday and there were at least 100 empty seats on the plane. That's why I believe the non-stop flights disappear during the dead of winter. Yes, Midwest needs to perform some scheduled maintenance work on the MD80 fleet. However, they could have easily pulled a flight to LAS or MCO during this time and not missed-out on a significant amount of traffic.

There are some other cut-backs as well. MCI-LAX returns to 2x daily in January (no dobt this is partially due to the elimination of OMA-LAX) and MCI-SAN goes back to 1x daily during January and February.

knope2001

I suspect SEA will be served differently next fall/winter than this fall/winter.

I would like to see them code share with Alaska in SEA so they can capitalize on traffic going to PDX, ANC, GEG, SMF, BOI and other smaller places, but I wonder if AS would bother for an airline with just 2x/day into SEA. AS does seem willing to code share with many partners, though.

More schedule changes are coming, if for no other reason that MCI-LAX returns to 3x on March 1 but LAX-MCI stays at 2x. And that 3/1 schedule shows MCI-LAX departures at 11:05am, 8:00pm and 9:55pm. Along with the 8:30pm MKE-LAX nonstop, that's far more evening capacity to LAX than necessary. I'm sure we'll see changes before then.