This is incorrect. FLL is Seasonal Daily service. Kudos to AirTran for filling the voids left by Midwest. I had booked with Delta yesterday, used their 24 hour cancellation policy and re booked with AirTran, and saved $110.00.:)

They issued a correction this afternoon, however the correction said it was to fix a year error...February 2009 instead of 2008. This corrected version has *also* removed Los Angeles and Phoenix from the city list. However (a) MKE-PHX is still showing as bookable for winter into spring, and (b) in the lower half of this corrected PR item they still have the original city list which includes LAX and PHX.

It's also confusing that they give us a nice grid that shows us all their MKE flights, including ATL (unchanged at 4 from today) and LGA (down to 2 from 3 today) plus all the expanded markets....but they don't mention PHX.

Kinda confusing and/or misleading. And listening to local MKE media reports this PM, no two reports were alike that I caught. They all had the same general gist, of course. But some said that LAX was being added, some said that LGA was being stepped up, some really talked up BWI and only mentioned Florida in passing.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/080723/nyw072.html?.v=101

Anyway, even with the AirTran expansion there will be around 25% fewer nonstop seats from MKE to Florida this winter/spring peak, and 30% fewer seats to Vegas:

Average daily departing nonstop seats

FLL
2008 246
2009 137

RSW
2008 403
2009 274

MCO
2008 683
2009 647

TPA
2008 423
2009 246

LAS
2008 681
2009 427

Not according to their online reservation system...try booking a Tu or Wed nonstop in Nov, Dec, or Jan...daily service starts in Feb 2009. Their press release is not entirely accurate or complete. Your Feb FLL flight is daily, but not if you were flying earler.

Ummm...I can't help but think that if it was YX instead of FL which had such messed up information a few people here would be complaining that Midwest didn't know what they were doing, that they were misleading the public, and that they clearly didn't have a clue how to run things.

Midwest deserves the grief and bad PR they are getting for how poorly they have handled passengers on axed markets. That's a much bigger and more damaging gaff that today's AirTran goof which will probably only be noticed by those paying attention and quickly shurgged off and forgotten. But I think AirTran's PR mess-ups and website issues and inconsistancies here are further evidence of just how changable, last minute, and on-the-fly airline scheduling can be in cases like this...for everybody.

Indeed, the AirTran press release was confusing and misleading. Their website has periodic inconsistency within it.

As hectic as the last few days have been, they are getting us to where we need to go.

I have been trying to call Midwest to check on upcoming flights to CMH and TPA because I got the red error message of death when I tried to view the reservations online. I wasn't able to get through on the phone, but I logged in yesterday and the upcoming reservations are now available again.

I wonder if the website was just too overloaded for a while. On Tuesday, the CMH reservations in August and December were viewable. Then yesterday, my February TPA flight finally became active.

Updated page on YX website regarding the changes in schedules and related info:

http://www.midwestairlines.com/Sched...ge/SCInfo.html

AirTran perhaps not as likely to backfill?
 

Midwest’s biggest rival in Milwaukee, AirTran, gave us some clue on how they are doing in markets launched to compete with or backfill Midwest here on yesterday’s conference call.

At several points in the call they referred to the added east-west flying this year with terms like “weak”, “disappointing”, and characterized it as a “drag” on the system. From other comments…and these were not specific to Milwaukee…they saw two big issues in their system. First, close-in bookings dropped way off this summer And second, fare increases have frequently not resulted in a net increase in revenue, meaning that the fare increases reduced traffic more than the higher fares offset. While it does not appear that AirTran has problems filling seats on the long haul Milwaukee flights, apparently yield is the issue.

When asked about plans for Atlanta and Milwaukee, and specifically if they planned to move capacity up to Milwaukee, the reply was that they were “comfortable flying some of these Florida routes that perhaps Midwest is walking away from.” And that was it. No talk of opportunities here, or potential, or their increased market share at MKE. Considering the normal tone of AirTran’s communication in cases like these which has generally ranged between positive spin and downright swagger, they said nothing good about Milwaukee. Not even any sort of cursory comment about the level of support found in Milwaukee.

Of course none of this is exactly predictive on AirTran’s plans in Milwaukee or in markets where they compete with or are backfilling Midwest. But it does suggest that we might not see AirTran backfill as much of the Midwest cuts as expected, even next summer. As for this fall and winter they mentioned they will cut utilization significantly on off-peak days, and already some of their new Milwaukee flights (Orlando in particular so far) have seen trips removed from the schedule on off-peak days as compared to just a few days ago. There are loading additional fall/winter schedule cuts this weekend.

Obviously oil prices make a difference, and who knows what they will be next summer when we may or may not see AirTran return to nonstop markets like MKE-SEA. But comments in the conference call seemed much more concerned about the weak revenue side, especially long haul east-west flying. They pointed out the weakness of their long-haul east-west flying several times during the call. For what it’s worth there are rumors (not just on a.net) that AirTran may discontinue some west coast destinations like San Diego and Phoenix. If they can’t make west coast nonstops from their Atlanta hub work, it seems unlikely that Milwaukee is different.

More info online in the AAI the conference call (both on audio and free transcript) for those interest further in AirTran’s results. This isn’t an AirTran board, of course, and some probably would prefer none of this mentioned. Yet I do think it is relevant for Midwest because of AirTran’s push to compete and/or backfill Midwest markets. And frankly, also for some vindication on how difficult it is to make a dime on long haul west coast from MKE, something which some seem to believe as a defect unique to Midwest. Sure, oil is high, but the AirTran call focused again and again on weak revenue more than just oil.

Could it be the economy?
 

It isn't just high fuel prices, it is also the economy. The economy is in near recession due to the banking crisis and oil price shock which functions like a tax and removes spending power from consumers. It is not surprising that Air Tran would not expand in this environment.

Again, why would Air Tran try to expand when the economy is weak? I'm happy that Air Tran is adding Baltimore back into the schedule and providing service to Florida. I also note that Air tran is continuing to provide low-cost service non-stop to LGA. This is great for me as I was considering taking the family to New York for Thanksgiving (and I won't be gouged by Midwest). A little swagger is preferable to Midwest bumbling.


You know as well as I that we are entering the slack travel period for westbound flying. A weak economy, high-oil, and the low demand season. It's seems like a no-brainer not to add a lot of service at this time.

[QUOTE=knope2001;10124251]Midwest’s biggest rival in Milwaukee, AirTran, gave us some clue on how they are doing in markets launched to compete with or backfill Midwest here on yesterday’s conference call.


I think that you should move this to the Airtran forum. They may have better insight into the inner workings of that company.

[QUOTE=Tim34;10126569I think that you should move this to the Airtran forum. They may have better insight into the inner workings of that company.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I tried to just keep it mostly from the perpsective of competition for Midwest and market backilling of Midwest. But there's plenty more to discuss about AirTran not really related to Midwest, and I'm not sure I want to devote the time to that over on the AirTran board. Starting a thread on this over there is a commitment to keep up on that thread, and it might be like opening Pandora's box. Sometimes I jump in on a.net threads on AirTran, but there are only so many hours in the day and I spend too much time online already.

more details on competitive response to the new Midwest schedule and reductions
 

Remember how the 7/23 AirTran press release of Milwaukee expansion to backfill Midwest cuts had a grid of all their MKE flights? And how it seemed odd that Phoneix was not in the grid even thought they had been selling MKE-PHX nonstops effective in December for a couple of weeks?

Well, MKE-PHX was pulled from the FL schedule early this morning. They must have known it was going to be cut back on or before 7/23. Took them until this morning to load the new schedule showing it pulled.

MKE-PHX will still have 4x/day, two each from Midwest and USAirways.

It appears that four daily flights is about all the route can support. AirTran's exit from this market is hardly a shock given how poor the route performed last year. That's not a slam against AirTran. Northwest also had a difficult time filling its planes on this route, both during the actual MKE hub days back in the late 1980s/early 1990s and later during the focus city build-up. Despite having generally good loads, U.S. Airways has never beefed-up their MKE-PHX flight schedule beyond the two daily flights, either.

I can't believe an airline would actually continue to sell tickets on a route they knew would be cut... :D Sorry, I couldn't resist....

If I'm not mistaken, FL originally announced the MKE-PHX route as seasonal service (like most of their MKE routes). Is this route gone permanently, or might it return at some point?

On this board, Midwest was accused of being dishonest for not announcing cutbacks right away, but will AirTran face the same criticism?