Yes, three Republic-related posts in one week! Sorry to be repetitive, but some interesting route (and fleet) announcements have been coming from them of late. We’ve seen a bunch of routes from Milwaukee reinstated over the past few months, and now Kansas City is getting some love with new nonstops to New Orleans and Columbus, which are both routes the airline used to serve. Midwest launched flights to New Orleans in 2005 but left after Hurricane Katrina. Columbus has always had Milwaukee service, but Kansas City flights were cut a couple of years back.
New Orleans service will be daily and starts on May 20 – that’s interesting because Frontier is launching a daily Denver nonstop soon after in June. The Midwest flights are a few hours earlier, so that gives Frontier/Midwest customers a few more options two and from the city. The service will be provided by Republic E-170s.
As mentioned earlier, Columbus is an existing Midwest city, and it has a few ERJs to Milwaukee per day. So why add Kansas City? There’s certainly some local demand there, but I think this is to help generate some extra connections, which is something that Frontier has done recently by announcing Denver service from some other Midwest destinations.
But after looking through the schedule, it seems that this flight adds a new connecting option to cities like Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco. In fact, the outbound flight (YX1989) in the morning is a one-stop to Seattle. The inbound, YX1974, flies SFO-MCI-CMH, but for some reason that itinerary isn’t bookable on Midwest’s website.
The Columbus service is operated with Republic E-190s. CMH-MCI fights operate Monday-Saturday, while MCI-CMH operates Sunday-Friday.
As I’ve said a lot lately, it’s certainly interesting to watch Midwest rebuild. And it’s also fun to see a slew of route announcements in this economic environment.
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I’m starting to wonder if you have some sort of a Republic “man-crush”. =)
It is nice to see the new routes in this climate. I’d be curious if they’re possible due to the climate. Could some other airlines have been cutting back and they’re helping to fill the void? Or, more likely, is this due to the new found flexibility in swapping planes between the 3 previously separate fleets?
I don’t think other airlines have cut back on these routes lately (though I think Skybus did CMH-MCI at one point). And I think the other fleet types provide huge flexibility. Those 70 and 90 seaters are great for some of the smaller markets. And plus Midwest has a denser seating capacity now as well.