Starting November 2nd, 2008 Compass will make an entrance in the IND market. The MCO service goes to Compass and two of the DTW flights go to Compass. This I believe is the first ever Compass service to IND. Also TPA service goes to Mesaba and 2x of the DTW service goes to Mesaba as well.

For a long time it was mainline and Pinnacle only in IND. Now we have Pinnacle, Mesaba and Compass. Is this the new MEM? :-)

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I wonder what happens to all the regionals after the takeover?

Will Compass, Mesaba, et. al. become "Delta Connection"?

INteresting... I thought it was only a matter of time before this happened. I predict even after the the DL emerges, this will be the direction the IND focu city will take. Those pesky 50 seaters will be replaced by more and more 76 seaters with premium cabins. BTW - Mesaba is currently or has recently done the IND-DEN flights too.

At this point it appears that Mesaba and Compass both will be retained in the merger and will fly under the DL Connection banner. It also seems that Comair will join Mesaba and Compass under the current MesabaCompass Holdings Company umbrella.

It may be going that direction even before the merger completes. It was pointed out to me today that Compass ran an ad on Monster for pilots and flight attendants and the job was posted for the Indianapolis area. It didn't list a location but I checked around and couldn't find this ad posted anywhere else. You'll probably see Compass and Mesaba replace Pinnacle and the DC9's out of IND. That looks like where it is going now. With the November changes Mesaba and Pinnacle replace 4 DC-9 flights to DTW, 2 DC-9 flights to MCO and 1 DC-9 flight to TPA. They could have technically replaced other equipment to DTW but usually DTW is a CRJ and heavy DC-9 service. On occasion they throw in an A319 or something like that.

Since Compass is owned by NWA, I don't expect them to die once the merger completes. If it did, then finally RIP Independence Air.

OH NO! Does this mean all MCO service is going to be on CRJ/ERJs??? No first class??? Argh! I fly this route ALL the time. I will be way dissappointed...

Every Compass aircraft (they only fly E-175s) has a 12-seat first class cabin. And if they use the Mesaba CRJ-900s, those too have a 12-seat first class cabin.

Well...the new terminal at IND is about to open (October 30th) but it doesn't have the gate capacity for a full scale hub. However, I see NWA/DL using it to off load MEM and CVG. NWA expanded to take over Terminal A at IND 4 years ago and that gave them 10 gates. DL has three gates at IND. Assuming the merged Co can lease 16 gates at the new facility at IND it would be a stretch to move ahead of MEM with traffic.

IMHO - MEM will be used to relieve some burden from ATL. While ATL is a great connecting point, it isn't the best connecting point from the west to the mid-south, which MEM indeed is. I believe MEM will live on in that respect, but be scaled back to more of a focus city with some relief for ATL. CVG will go the way of IND and become an o&d favoring focus city to parallel IND. 319/320/738/73Gs to the coasts and other major markets and CR9s/175s to fill in the gaps, much like IND. SLC, MSP, DTW, ATL will be used for their great locations for connectivity, but obviously for their o&d as well. JFK needs to morph into an o&d power house to Europe with minimal connectivity. There is no reason why DTW couldn't be used as a connection point to Europe over JFK. Except for eastern seaboard cities.

Mrp Alert - Mesaba is also wholly owned by NWA. It would be far easier to get rid of the wholly owned carriers than it would be to rid themselves of Pinnacle or Skywest or any other cost + regional partner. Having said that, I believe Compass and Mesaba (Mesaba more so than Compass) will be just fine in the merger, for many other reasons, not just being wholly owned.

I meant more along the lines of becoming NW's rj world instead of the nice mix of mainline and Pinnacle service as it has been for a number of years. BTW the opening date has been pushed back to November 11th. Also NW has 8 gates at IND right now and DL has 3. NW uses 4 of their gates (A5 - A8) to service 2 jets each. Actually I think someone told me one of them can service 3 jets but I can't swear to it. I know 2 for sure. So NW has 8 jet bridges but 12 or 13 jet parking spaces at the terminal.

I wouldn't think the mix would change all that much... IND would still likely see a mix of mainline and Airlink, only with more 76 seat a/c with FC for the FFers.

I think you missed my point. NWA acquired the operating certificate of Independence Airlines when they went kaput and named the new entity Compass. I am making no judgments on the viability of any other regional partner of NWA other than Compass.