BDL looks like it ends Sunday September 7, it's been zeroed out in the Amex ITN availability site from Monday the 8th on. I enjoyed it while it lasted, and in talking to other people who flew it they did too. With Frontier leaving a couple days before that, BDL will have no smaller airline service, just legacy, Southwest and Air Canada.

Gee, no $hit

Dangit! Raleigh gets the shaft again? Somebody is going to have to cut us a break at some point..

BTW, how is Raleigh-MKE leisure? Is it leisure for the Wisconsonites or the Raleigh-wooders?

[regarding seeing Midwest MKE-RSW flights not zeroed out out discount fares]

Check a date like 2/17 to 2/24. The cheapest fare is all-Midwest metal for $342.

Earlier (like January) you will find that the cheaper flights are code-share connections and the all-Midwest flights are over $1000....suggesting no YX metal then. But come February/March the discount fares show up on the Midwest metal flights.

What you saw on the AirTran web site is something that shows up frequently on their site. I think it is a glitch that comes when a flight number or time is going to be changed. You'll see only full coach and/or business class available for a flight, and then several days later it will show all fare buckets again available, but with a different flight number or time. I've often wondered how many bookings they lose to this glitch.

Check out MKE-MCO 2/19 southbound and 2/26 northbound on airtran.com. Southbound both nonstops show only full-Y and C class available. The return flights show all fare buckets open. In a few days...perhaps even tomorrow...the MKE-MCO flights for 2/19 will have the discount classes available again.

(I tried to find some other examples of this but the AirTran site locked up on me again...no matter how I changed my dates or origin/destination, it keeps returning MKE-MCO for 2/19 and 2/26. Anybody else have this? It's been more frequent in the last week.)

I do think there's a good chance that AirTran will return to MKE-FLL, a market they announced as year-round back in 2002 but delayed in starting, ending after a few months and having never returned. Yet considering how much they have trimmed their Florida flying versus last year (about 1/3 of their 2008 point-to-point Florida city pairs dropped for 2009) it's not a given.

Florida leisure flying for this winter is a big quesiton mark.

Like most airlines, AirTran has cut their Florida snowbird flying a lot this winter.

Unlike most other airlines, AirTran has not generally raised Florida fares very much. At least not at this point.

A good example is Chicago-Florida. For this fall and early winter, Southwest's best fares are web-only specials on certain days starting at $339 round trip. AA and UA have generally followed that fare level with nonstop flights from ORD. Yet AirTran still has widely-available $219 round trips from Chicago to Florida.

Florida flying has been trimmed my most airlines out of concern that a weaker economy, inflation, and higher air fares will crimp demand. If AirTran chooses to ramp up Milwaukee-Florida flying this winter...and loads up on $219 round trips....they'll probably fill a lot of seats. If they instead offer fares more in line with what other carriers (including Southwest) seem to think they should be charging, perhaps MKE doesn't need as much backfilling by AirTran.

Rumor has it the new YX schedule will be loaded tomorrow morning. N917me on A.net just reported the news. No details until then I guess.

http://www.airliners.net/aviation-fo....main/4073282/

Some of the speculation seems correct. For example, I entered a flight in Febrary to Baltimore, and all flights came up as $1334.00. That trip is usually pretty cheap. San Diego is $1626.

Maybe on some flights they'll throw you in a box and ship you UPS/FedEx overnight :)

The guess on cuts are from the Aviation Forum:LAXintl

Baltimore
Fort Myers
Fort Lauderdale
Hartford
Louisville
Muskegon
Raleigh
San Antonio
San Diego
St Louis
Wausau

I'm especially curious about this "surprise seasonal destination." That could be interesting. Maybe Midwest will be nice to me and make SAN seasonal :D I'm guessing that SEA or SFO will become seasonal when the new schedules are announced.

N917ME is fairly reliable. He stated that 11 stations will be closed, which is the same number knope came up with. Who needs a corporate press release when we have knope!

I just found the window of dates, which extends till April 19th. Is this the seasonal sevice that has been alluded to? When FLL was seasonal, it ran till mid or late April, just past Easter and Spring Break.

For Knope
 

Thanks for your help. That AirTran site sure does seem to be full of glitches. I've seen other strange things happen in the past.

I feel so bad for Midwest Airlines and it's employees. Midwest should have gotten more and better planes and maybe they should have went with AirTran. I just have this feeling that Midwest is where Eastern Airlines was in 1990.

Just downloaded and printed the YX Timetable effective July 2008 as memorabilia.

I also have a feeling that by the end of the year MCI will only have flights to MKE.

WTMJ said that it is likely that Orlando will gone ...

Can anyone see that as possible??

Looks like the system has been updated (or at least is starting to).

September 8th looks like the magic date.

Orlando appears to be gone (returning seasonal with only 1 717 in October) after that date along with most if not the other cities speculated about. Lots of other reductions as well.

Update: JS article: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=774305