MKE-IND was probably my most-frequent route, and it's definitely a market with a significant business segment.

Most likely it's not a Southwest market -- it's awfully short for much local leisure traffic, and there's not enough business travel to support a 737. Southwest also isn't much about "dedicated" 1-stop flights like they once were, so MKE-IND would need to largely rely on local passenger. Fifteen years back perhaps they'd have added a route like MKE-IND as something like SEA-MKE-IND-HOU to service SEA-IND and MKE-HOU thru traffic. But those days are pretty much long gone. That, plus Southwest's move away from shorter hops, make IND pretty unlikely for Southwest in Milwaukee.

I think the best shot for a new Southwest destination in the "short-ish" range is Nashville. It's far enough that flying compares favorably with driving both for business or leisure. And Southwest's pseudo-hub in BNA means a broad array of connection destinations are possible over Nashville. The biggest potential fly in the ointment is Nashville might compete with Atlanta for connecting flow, and keeping Atlanta in decent shape is first priority.

So, I figure a staff of about 2. One ticket counter/marshaller/required government security person and then an additional one for wing walking/ramp stuff. You could go down to one if they power out.. but that just seems really silly. Even Great Lakes in MSP uses 2 rampers (one's the GA) and they have the end of B to themselves.


Those jet bridges on the other side would not work. They do not have the vertical movement needed to get to a smaller jet.

As of researching and seeing what routes Southwest should use from MKE that's currently not offered, this is what I think Southwest should consider and these places should give a good amount of traffic from MKE and competition with other airlines and Chicago:
MKE-BNA
MKE-PIT
MKE-PHL
MKE-RDU
MKE-AUS
MKE-HOU
MKE-SAT
MKE-SAN (Daily Service)

Looks like OneJet will use D27, and they have indeed opened their own ticket counter with permanent signage and two check-in kiosks. Definitely a notable investment given that they could have simply paid someone to post a small sign and agree to handle all four, 8-seat flights per week. Hopefully it's an indication they have real growth plans here for the future. They definitely don't look amateurish or fly-by-night, which can't hurt.

Here's their MKE ticket counter -- sorry for the blurry image...

[IMG]http://i62.tinypic.com/suylo2.jpg[/IMG]

Definitely more permanent than Aeromexico. I didn't even realise that they were doing flight out of MKE. Are they just Funjet charters (like the old Midwest ones?)

Yup, AeroMexico is running the daily MKE-CUN flight plus some additional routes like Cozumel and Ixtapa. The season winds down in a week or two.

Here is the OneJet aircraft, it has been doing proving runs the last few days.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/N...830Z/KIND/KMKE

Huh i just saw an AeroMexico 738 parked at D51 when I flew out yesterday

Now you see him, now you don't
 

OneJet will run MKE-PIT-MKE M-Th starting 11May. Leaves MKE at 8am, leaves PIT at 4:30p.

I wonder if OneJet will actually put in some more routes that Midwest Connect or SkyWest operated in the past like these routes:

MKE-DSM
MKE-DAY
MKE-CMH
MKE-GRR
MKE-BNA
MKE-SDF
MKE-MKG

My dad goes to PIT and IND a lot for business and once I told him about this airline he got pretty happy about it.

I wonder if people realize how small the Hawker 400 that OneJet uses actually is? I have been fortunate enough to fly many private airplanes. The Hawker 400 is a small plane by any standards. The cabin height is 4'7" and the width is 4'10". This means that adults cannot stand, and you are very close to the other passengers. Four of the seats face each other. This a very normal arrangement in the world of private aviation, but most commercial passengers have not had any exposure to small, tight interiors. The OneJet press releases talk about the modern aircraft, but I don't think that most people do the research to learn about what they are going to be flying on. I find it interesting that OneJet does not have any information or photos of the interior of the aircraft. It will be interesting to get the reaction of passengers, and to see if this hybrid of private and commercial aviation will be successful.

Actually it's this Monday (5/4) already -- $458.20 round trip for Monday outbound/Tuesday return is a notch lower than competing connecting flights on DL and UA. It's a little peculiar how the expansion announcement came out. IND-PIT was assumed (if not leaked) and announced first, but then a few hours later MKE-PIT was announced and is actually starting a week before IND-PIT does.


Assuming they are successful I would guess Columbus, Nashville, Omaha and Grand Rapids are good candidates -- possibly some of the others as well. What's not clear, however, is how highly those would rank on a theoretical list of strong contenders across the eastern half of the country. For example MKE-OMA may well have promise but there's a huge list of potential city pairs they could be contemplating. Is MKE-OMA more promising than MEM-MSY, or BUF-ALB, or RIC-PIT, or RDU-JAX, or IND-BNA, etc.? Milwaukee (probably) has a leg up, along with Indy and Pittsburgh, because they already fly here. With the IND-MKE-PIT-IND triangle starting shortly, one would suspect they might next add things like PIT-ALB, MKE-CMH or IND-CLE sooner than a distant isolated city pair like MSY-LIT.

It's an interesting contradiction that a businessperson may whine a bit that their top-brass get the luxury of a corporate jet while lesser people have to fly commercial, yet I'm sure those same people might well complain about the OneJet Hawker 400 being cramped. It's kind of like people who would complain bitterly about not being able to fit into a sub-compact rental if that's all that was available, but they would melt at the opportunity to fold themselves into a tiny six-figure sports car. As long as they stick primarily to nonstop flights up to perhaps 75 minutes air time at most it's probably going to be generally accepted. But much longer than that and it may really push people away. Back when Skyway flew BE1 MKE-BNA it was about 1:40 air time, but people put up with the lack of restroom, inflight service, etc. But the BE1 still has more personal space then a Hawker 400. They may have range issues with a full load in the Hawker 400 anyway that precludes something fairly long like MKE-BDL anyway.

I see that starting November 1, Delta is upgauging the MKE-LGA route for one flight per day to a 717. This is good news for the route. I think that we all knew that it was coming, but it is nice to see that (for now) they are keeping the 5 flights per day. Hopefully the eventual upgauging on this route will not reduce the daily frequency. My guess is that we will always have one or two RJ's on the route, which is fine, because its nice to have the 5 flights per day.

November is still a dummy/skeleton schedule. Still plenty of time for that to re-downgrade.