I'm sure it sucks to have to go through the hassle and potential additional cost of rebooking. Any time a market is dropped there are unhappy customers left in the wake.

I do find this to be a very telling posting, however. Traffic in a peripheral connecting market for Midwest...like MSP-STL...which chooses Midwest because of a "too good to be true" fare, is just the type of traffic they should not be serving. This is not meant to slam you at all, MikeMpls. Seeking out low fares is a natural thing. And I'm not trying to imply that because you booked these low fares you somehow deserved this to happen to your or should have expected it. No, not at all. You did nothing wrong.

But when an airline has to fill seats by offering "too good to be true" fares to lure connecting passengers, that's a sign that they probably shouldn't be in that market. As recently as early 2007 MKE-STL was flown with 19-seat aircraft as it had been for years, and they struggled to fill seats even in the brief period of 32-seat FRJ service. Now with 50-seat CRJ's it was simply too much capacity for the market. Hence the really low MSP-STL fare. And now, STL (along with a very similar Louisville) are on the block.

This was probably the only flight I was surprised they dropped. At the minimum I would have thought they would have kept it just for you

It's too bad that they had to drop all of these flights, but if they can't make money on them, they shouldn't be flying them.

Tangentially related, but I just got a press release that NW is starting up 1x daily MKE-LAX-MKE on an A320.

NW507 Lv MKE 740a Ar LAX 1005a
NW506 Lv LAX 1100a Ar MKE 445p

Effective 9/6

I understand and sympathize with people who have to go through the hassle and potential additional cost of getting a replacement flight. It's a pain, and I can't blame them at being upset.

However what I don't understand is the level of anger primarily from participants here who don't even face travel plan disruptions. For those holding a reservation in an applicable market, of course it's a big deal if their flight or city got cut. But the overall flight reductions are not as catestrophic as some predicted.

We knew the M80 was planned to leave the fleet, but half of the M80 markets are retaining some nonstop service. Only one of the dropped M80 markets was a year-round market:

M80 current year-round markets
MKE-LAX dropped
MKE-MCO retained seasonally
MKE-TPA retained
MKE-PHX retained
MKE-LAS retained
MCI-SFO retained

M80 current seasonal markets
MKE-FLL dropped
MKE-RSW dropped
MKE-SEA dropped
MKE-SFO dropped

Certainly the continuing markets will see fewer seats and in some cases fewer flights. But cutting back on leisure markets in the current environment is hardly unique to Midwest.

Beyond the M80's, nearly all the cuts at MKE came from reduced CRJ flying. And about half of those CRJ were cuts in feeder markets (either market drops or flight reductions.)

I don't think the September 8th cuts are nearly as bad as they might have been for MKE. Omitting the feeder markets like ATW, eighteen markets have no change to their frequency, and three more lost a single trip. Where Midwest is cutting back most...to Florida, Vegas, LAX and seasonal SFO/SEA, AirTran will likely still fly nonstop. The biggest losses for Milwaukee that nobody is likely to backfill are Hartford, Raleigh and Louisville.

Actually, this isn't all that much of a tanget as we've been talking a lot about who might backfill some cut Midwest markets.

Of course the next line of discussion will be how Northwest is going to just take over Midwest and this is just the start...in the cards all along. Soon the Midwest 717's will be replacing the DC9's and flying at Indianapolis or some similar garble, the claims will likely be.

So I guess those fretting about Milwaukee not having nonstop service to the 2nd largest city in America can relax now.

To draw an analogy to employment, I think that Hartford might have been a victim of downsizing more than being fired for their own lack of merit.

Part of the restructuring budget was probably to cut back on the number of outsourced CRJs in the fleet. They negotiated with Skywest to cut back to twelve (eleven lines of flying plus a spare.) Now with that reduced CRJ flying, they can get more loads of passengers, or more �bang for their buck� out of 11 lines of CRJ flying by concentrating on shorter flights. That�s a simplified way to look at it, but I think it holds true. If they chose to keep BWI, BDL and RDU with only 11 lines of CRJ flying, they would have had to cut far more shorter flights to GRR, DSM, MSP, etc. Now if BDL were a total gold mine or exceptionally critical to their strategic plan to serve the MKE business community, they would have figured out a way to keep it. I don�t think it is that important, but on the other hand I don�t think it�s a doomed loser, either.

Funny�that brings back an aspect of the old outsourcing-the-RJ-flying debate. Had Midwest been able to acquire the 50-seat RJ�s as some wanted, they wouldn�t so easily be able to cut back the RJ flying as they are.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on BDL going. I have to dig some more about SAN going, including getting to understand the stats MOBflyer posts on a.net.

I got the same treatment on Sunday trying to rebook MKE-FLL n February. they currently have me booked on their NWA codeshare via IND and I am not happy with that routing.

I just got off the phone with a "rebooking specilist" that tells me that ANYONE holding tickets for a city where service is being elimiated is not going to be reaccomidated on another airline, and if I want to fly BOS-MKE-BOS I would have to pay the fare difference to the tune of several hundread dollars


Now I know I will never fly Midwest again.

Thats messed up. Looks like Northworst is rubbing off on Midwest.

Damn, NWA is not playing around. They will not let Airtran take any of their Milwaukee business. I cant blame them

Obviously, that would result in Midwest shelling out a lot of $$$ at a time when they are trying to conserve.

Knope that is exactly what will be happening. Milwaukee will be the new feeder airport for Indy

Wow...that's really inexcusible. It's one thing (and not a particularly good thing) to be forced to take whatever flight they put you on. But to be told that not only won't they rebook you on another carrier, but they want to charge you a fare difference if you switch to another comparable airport, is downright awful. It costs them next to nothing to move to from BDL to BOS.

If AirTran had moved first and covered that route, NW wouldn't have bothered.

There's the difference between class and crass. YX wants the public to think it's classy but the way they handled this is pure crass;

This is precisely what displaced travelers are being told. Pure crass.

YX's decision would have gone over much better with the MKE public had they done their best to reaccomodate people -- in other words, treat others the way you'd like to be treated.