What will happen to Midwest Airlines? They have announced that that Republic will fly E-170’s for them. They will reduce the mainline fleet to 9 planes. One rumor on airliners.net (yes I know there are lot of false rumors here) claims they will be done as an airline on September 7.
They are behind on gate fees, and Skywest has terminated flying for them. Sounds rough for Midwest.
They can’t technically go “Chapter 7” because of their ownership by the private equity group. What the group will likely do is just shut them down.
I agree that it does look bad. My guess is that NW will take over many of their key MKE routes (florida, NYC, Boston, Dallas, DCA), but their OMA and MCI operations will largely be abandoned. Their slots at LGA will likely be sold to NW to support this.
Doy, you’re right. I wonder how much Delta/Northwest gets involved, because Delta doesn’t protect its turf as much. Northwest has to be crazy in the midwest because of the pricing power they gain, and the fact that they are nonexistent out of the midwest. I mean, outside of Chicago, Northwest dominates the midwest, but most airlines have complete networks. It would be nice to see NWA pick up the slack, but I am sure Airtran is eyeing it too.
I would imagine that the graveyard is the next stop for Midwest, an unfortunate circumstance for MKE and MCI travelers. However, at MKE I have to believe that both Delta/NWA and Airtran will compete for passengers. MKE is a benefit to both Milwaukee and northern Illinois passengers who don’t want to deal with ORD. I find it hard to believe, however, that Delta/NWA would heavily increase nonstop flights at MKE considering its location between MSP and DTW. My guess is that Airtran will attempt to increase operations in hopes of developing a northern hub.
I think Midwest survives through the holidays and then calls it quits.
Wonder how much of that MCI business Southwest might get…
They already have a pretty nice operation. Most of Midwest’s unique destinations are business routes like New York LGA and Washington Reagen, that Southwest doesn’t serve.
Even though I voted for a charter company, I really don’t think Midwest will make it at all. You can’t run a mainline service with just 9 aircraft unless you reduce down to 1 hub and do just business flights to NYC, BOS and WAS, and then thats iffy.
The business routes are the only thing that have a chance, and all I can say is 2 X 2 seats doesn’t work, when pricing rules. And then people get mad for them taking out big seats. Well, you get what you pay for!
Anyone think they might go the Allegiant route? Just do vacation stuff. Or maybe even merge with Allegiant. The 717’s could fly the shorter routes, and last time I checked, Allegiant turned a profit in Q2…
No, they will stay to biz routes. One reason (and perhaps the only) reason Allegiant makes money is because of their packages with major hotel companies. The airline itself is most likely not profitable.
With Southwest now invading MKE, times are going to be really bad for Midwest Airlines. Right now, I see a couple of things that could happen. One thing I believe will happen is that TPG will pull out before Midwest would declare bankrupcy. From here, multiple possiblities could happen, one is Midwest would cease operations or two, Delta Air Lines would have to take control of Midwest. Now, the sooner TPG pulls out, the more likely one will happen. The reason I believe this is Delta already has it’s hands full with Northwest. If number two happens, Delta will have several options; A) Treat Midwest as a LCC like Song, B) intergret Midwest with a merger, or C) just drop Midwest like we did with Pan Am.
I believe SCX is already doing that for the area, as they dropped back to chartered/biz flights instead of straight commercial.
As far as DAL/NWA goes, If they stay in any capacity in Wisconsin, it will be as a feeder (read: Compass) for either MSP or DTW. not really enough distance for any sort of mainline service to MKE (that I know of), and they already serve ORD.
OMA and MCI will suffer here, as SWA will pick up that traffic (I got a chance to catch the E170 in MEP colours at Eppley; really nice paintjob!), and this will give SWA more of a foothold at MCI, as they are the biggest airline there. This goes along with my thinking that OMA, STL, or MCI will get the first routes to MKE.
If SKW stopped flying for them (nothing mentioned on SKW’s website), then that will be a huge blow for MEP. SKW will still serve MKE for DAL and UAL, though, so they’ll still have a presence.
How many slots did ATA have at LGA, and did SWA pick up all of those? if not, if MEP loses their slots at LGA, could SWA pick up more, if not move their ops out of ISP?(doubt they’d move out of ISP though; but entertain the thought.)
BL.
SCX still flies scheduled commercial flights. In fact they haven’t really changed their schedule much in the past year.
YX has 9 LaGuardia slots. However, I believe DL would have the first crack at them if they were to become available.
Yes, WN got all of ATA’s LGA slots.
It was announced officially today that RAH will operate the EMB190 for Midwest. RAH has a lot “financially” involved with Midwest, they will do what ever is necessary to protect the best interest of Republic. This said, I highly doubt Midwest will be going anywhere anytime soon. Starting in September, the 190s will begin west coast service for Midwest.
Midwest has a great product and RP has gone the extra mile to ensure a seamless transition. It seems all the hoop-lah is on these forums. Any passenger is frivolous to how airlines work/out-source. As long as their plane is on time, their cookie is fresh, and the plane is not small… then what is all the fuss about?
Furthermore, the EMB 170/190 is a beautiful aircraft. When passengers step onto them, they ask the same thing… What is this? A Boeing? An Airbus? We always tell them the same thing, its a baby boebus…
It is sad to see the mainline Midwest pilots loosing their jobs, but they had several options to work with Midwest & Republic to be placed as pilot with RP… Yes with a pay decrease, but at the end of the day, a paycheck is better than no paycheck at all. Also, at the end of the day, Midwest has a business to run, with or without the pilots…
Now that Southwest has laid their eyes on MKE, the fare wars will begin. Midwest may be caught in the middle of all this, but their are still some loyal fliers, and not all of us want to be crammed into a cattle cart with jet engines. And lets not forget, the cookies are awesome.
To all the airline professionals out there, good luck & fly safe! 