On a different note. I'm angry that Midwest Air did not stop allowing booking on its MD80 routes when they announced that they were parking the MD80s. All these weeks they let people purchase tickets on flights that were canceled. That is just plain wrong.

Hopefully there's not a need for a thread about that.

I'll try to behave myself too :D

No matter how you put it, this is a huge blow to MKE and SE Wisconsin. There is always a bright side to everything bad and I look at this as opportunity for other airlines that are managed better and have an actual plan to come into MKE to offer new service. Midwest might get their act together... I don't know. If they do, big BONUS for Milwaukee. MKE can be a viable medium sized hub for some airline.

On another note, I read an article yesterday about the airline industry.... One analyst put it quite blundtly that most airlines are run by idiots. The ones hurting the most right now, are probably the ones run by idiots IMHO.

Can your friend shed some light as to what happened with SAN :D.

According to the Q1 stats posted on airliners.net, SAN generated more system revenue, had better yields, and generally higher yields than SEA or LAX.

Help me understand this one :confused:

Thanks for that advice. After posting, I did try that....

It appears my outbound trip has no change, except the obvious aircraft type change from MD80 to 717 to and from TPA. Until Friday, a quick check on my reservation still showed a MD80 on the route. My return legs are still there, with a minor 10 minute schedule change. Fortunately, that small 10 minute schedule change opens up a new connecting option in MKE for the quick hop over to GRR. If/when I get through to a live person, I may ask for the earlier connection (from 2.5 hours down to 23 minutes, which would be GREAT!)

All my seat assignments appear to be gone. That is, when I look at the seat maps as if I am going to purchase a new ticket, the seats I had reserved are open for assignment. For the MD80-to-717 segments, I can sort of understand that. But for the unchanged CRJ segments, I do not understand why XY would mess with my seats.

I am certain I will get there and back again (just like a hobbit), so I am not terribly worried. Certainly others have more disruptive changes to deal with. Which is why I wish XY would let me do this on-line, a self service option which would be fastest for me, cheapest for them and leave their telephone center to deal with the more complex changes. No on-line help on the weekends, but even if it was available, they might be similarly swamped.

Rant
 

Lets stop with the misconception that all Midwest needs to do is focus on buisness travelers. An airline needs both buisness and leisure travelers. If you think all an airline needs to do is focus on buisness travelers you can ask Maxjet and EOS how that is working for them.

All of those people who are having their vacations to Orlando, FLL and LAX disrupted will remember this.

Pit
 

I didn't see PIT mentioned on either the "retained service" or the "axed service" list. Did I miss something, or did YX forget about them? Currently served with 4x CRJs to MKE.

Toronto was not there either

If there are seats available on the flights you want, you can do a 24 hold by inputting the usual info, including credit card number, on the YX booking site, and selecting seats. At the bottom of the "Enter Payment Information" screen, you will see the following message:

Follow the directions to hold your space for 24 hours. If you do not complete the reservation within 24 hours (online or by phone), it will lapse and cancel out. This will give you a little time to try to reach Midwest on the phone to confirm your changes.

Again, good luck.. it looks like you will be okay.

Midwest forgot to include the two cities in their online notice, but they will continue to be served by Midwest Connect.

It must have been a miserable job inputting all of the changes, and I certainly do not envy the CSRs who have to deal with the customers right now.

Returning now to my little story...

I was able to get through on the Reservation Change line just a few minutes ago. I tried about every 15 minutes for roughly 4 hours and got only busy signals. On my successful call, I had to wait on hold (through advertisements about all 12 cities served from Kansas City, including SAN!!)about 5 minutes to speak with an agent. My hat is off to the reservation agent, who was VERY pleasant and helpful.

As expected, I had just a 10-minute schedule change on the TPA-MKE segment. I told the agent that I wished I had been able to view and/or make changes on-line, but she explained they really wanted to talk in person with anyone impacted. I asked for and received the shorter connection in MKE on the return leg with no hassles whatsoever. As soon as I hung up, I could view my revised reservation on-line.

One final interesting tidbit...when selecting seats, the map for the 717 shows an unusual arrangement, which I think may be a temporary glitch. In Rows 1-10, there are the A and B seats on one side, then C and F seats on the other side, with a small gap between C and F in each row where the E seats should be. In Row 11, seats available are A, B, E and F (no C aisle seat on the 3 side). And in Rows 12 and higher, it's the expected 2x3 arrangement with A, B, C, E and F. Essentially, you can't select the middle seat in Rows 1-10.

In any case, I'm happy. Best of luck to everyone else impacted.

No one said that Midwest only needed to focus solely on business travelers to survive. They haven't been doing that since 1985. What Midwest is doing is focusing on their core business routes. Lower fare buckets will still be offered for leisure travelers and this will help fill seats during off-peak times (Midwest should be able to get a better traffic mix and higher yields with the newcseating lay-out).

The problem with the Florida routes is that there is little higher fare business travel in those markets. That's why FLL and RSW are gone from Midwest's route map. It's also why you're seeing a huge pull back in capacity to places like Florida and Las Vegas from other airlines as well. Chasing only after leisure travelers just doesn't pay the bills anymore.

The seat map represents the new "Midwest Class" seat configuration. The front half of the aircraft will be all 2 x 2 seating (Signature seating), while the rear of the aircraft will have the typical Saver Service seating (like the MD80 aircraft). There will be no middle seat in rows 1-11.

Glad you worked things out; have a good trip.

I've been screwed thrice by YX schedule changes...the worst was on YX810 on 11/30. YX refused to put me on YX710 the same day. Booking on another carrier will be much more expensive.

Legend Airlines was another.