Have you been on the JSonline forum? Employees are calling him Tim-laden. Ouch!!! Midwest will need to figure out a way to restore their image or they will not make it.

Several people interviewed on TMJ4 last night said they could not trust Midwest and booked on AirTran. This has to be the worst PR debacle for Midwest. After TH is done with his hatchet work, it is time for him to leave.

Milwaukee is???

Again , every airline you mentioned already serves LAX from somewhere else, so they're already serving the second largest city in the nation.

What you're asking them to do is to add MKE to their LAX flights, not to add LAX to their MKE flights. Airlines always look at service from their hub or focus city standpoint. So while Midwest looked it from MKE, the other airlines you mention (since they have neither hubs nor focus cities in MKE) will look at it from the LAX end. And from that end, why fly to MKE when there are so many bigger markets each of them don't yet fly to?

Of course. And many of them may choose another airline the next time fly -- tfree years later!!!!

That's the trouble with most of the leisure market. It's filled with people who fly very occasionally, who pick airlines solely on price with convenience thrown in, and who tend to pick a different airline every time they fly anyway.

While it's true that an airline needs leisure travelers, it's because they need them to fill up the balance of the plane. But the balance has to include enough people (presumably business travelers, but occasionally a few leisure travelers) who are willing to pay higher fares that actually make the money for the airline.

With the very visible presence of Midwest in Wisconsin, northern Il, and at MCI, the restructuring picture has become a very emotional situation. Customers have genuinely loved the company; they now feel abandoned and hurt.

Like most carriers, some very unpleasant management decisions are being made, for the viability of the company. With Tim Hoeksema at the helm for so many years, he is the "face" of the company. Bear in mind, however, that he is an employee. At this stage, the impending changes are obviously as recommended by Seabury and TPG, but publicly seen as implemented by Hoeksema and company. Keep in mind that Hoeksema's roots are as a pilot. He has been there since the beginning and wants the company to keep flying.

All of the announced changes are strictly business decisions, and hopefully, good ones. Time will tell. If oil prices hold or continue to drop and then stabilize, the economy will start to rebound, as will this industry. The commercial aviation industry will never return to what it once was, but hopefully it will improve from what it will soon be.

If you watch the link to the Mike Gousha interview posted above, you'll see how well Hoeksema did in answering the pointed questions posed to him.

Unlike YX spokesman Mike Brophy, Hoeksema was relaxed and answered the questions with ease. Like a good CEO, he shared more of the overall vision that he hopes will save Midwest from extinction. If only Brophy was this polished. As someone else mentioned on this board, Brophy really did look like he was standing in front of a firing squad last week.

They specifically refused to rebook me on another carrier even though the option would have been available.

I was talking about LA. Yes, Milwaukee is the largest market in the country
To be perfectly honest at this point I could care less. This is a mess that the Milwaukee community leaders will have to try an figure out.

This, perhaps, is the most compelling statement in the ENTIRE thread.

For many years YX tried very hard to promote good image in the MKE community and relied heavily on its "hometown airline" status on more than one occasion, as recently as when it tried to "save the cookie."

What would have been appropriate for YX to do in this situation is "whatever it takes" to make an affected customer whole (even if it meant rebooking on AirTran!). They failed miserably.

I agree that YX has lost a lot of trust. Yes, other carriers have those issues, too, but they never in recent memory tried to forge a bond with their community as YX did and as far as YX is concerned, it's a one-way street. Shame on them.

He isn't HOAXsema without a good reason?

Not really. You need higher end leisure travelers, regular leisure travelers and business travelers.

I have (had?) tickets booked on YX BDL-MKE-BDL for Thanksgiving weekend, I called this morning (busy signal first 6 tries) then got though and put on hold. After 3 minutes of hold time I got an agent who looked up my flights and offered a refund, I declined and asked to be reaccommodated on another airline. She pushed the refund again, and I declined again, and I was then told that she would print off my reservation to forward to a team of people that were working on reaccommodated people and that I would get a call within 3 days.

I can't believe that BDL-MKE got the ax. Those flights are always more expensive than other options and always seem to be sold out.

I have a feeling that I've flown Midwest for the last time.

The decision to drop MKG isn't tremendously surprising, but it sure is disappointing.

In a better economy I think MKG could fill the CRJs - the local paper says the flights have been running 70-80% full as is. Three months isn't much time to get the market used to jet service. The prop service seemed to be pretty consistently full the few times I'd used it.

I'm not looking forward to the driving to GRR that's in my future - as much as I don't like the drive, I'd rather do that and fly west via MSP (or MKE, I guess, while YX lives) than fly east and connect through DTW in order to go west on NWA...

20 lines.

There were talks, however when Great Lakes announced they had been awarded Ironwood and Manistee, they said they were not going to code-share and would instead fly as ZK. Midwest handles them in Milwaukee, but there is no code share and does not appear to be one on the horizon.

Great Lakes bid Ironwood as a 1-stop service, with a stop in Rhinelander. However their bid for Manistee was for nonstop service. So they could not add a Muskegon stop unless they petitioned the DoT for a change, something that the local Manistee community might fight.