This morning it was reported that AirTran has inked a deal with Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun to appear in AirTran advertisements and make appearances for the airline. This is in addition to AirTran’s other advertising at Miller Park. The ironic part? Midwest is still the team’s official airline.
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Yesterday and today AirTran announced some new routes, and I always like looking at new service.
First, starting June 11, Atlantic City will become a new destination with a pair of daily flights to AirTran’s hub in Atlanta. More interestingly, AirTran announced this morning that it will begin flights from Milwaukee to Washington-National (DCA), also starting on June 11 with two daily fligts. This route is notable as it is one already flown by Midwest. It looks like Midwest will have more frequencies on the route, but still, it’s not good to have AirTran as a competitor on yet another route.
Again, why didn’t Midwest take that offer?
Last year we saw Midwest’s mainline fleet decline in terms of size by a great deal. Midwest had 25 717s, and then got rid of 16 of them and had them replaced by E170s flown by Republic.
Recently, Boeing announced it would be leasing 25 717s to ClickMexicana (to replace the Fokker 100s I believe), and the first sixteen of those will be the ex-Midwest birds. Apparently, Boeing can make Midwest give back the other nine aircraft. In this news report, Boeing didn’t say either way what was going to happen.
Regardless, this again just shows how much Midwest has declined in recent months. Midwest should have just accepted AirTran’s takeover bid, but apparently “saving the cookie” by cutting a large amount of capactiy was more important.
I was never a fan of Midwest’s “save the cookie” campaign and thought the airline should just accept AirTran’s takeover bid. But, they ddin’t, and now the airline is just a shell of what it once was after replacing many of its 717s with Republic E170s. Now, because of that move, Midwest pilots are angry and want federal mediators to get involved with contract negotiations.
Meanwhile, AirTran is going along on its merry way and expanding service in Milwaukee. The May 21 schedule adds eleven nonstops and four new cities: Branson, Denver, Minneapolis, and St. Louis (though Denver is seasonal). To add insult to injury, the airline also signed a sponsorship agreement with the Milwaukee Brewers.
Midwest should have accepted AirTran’s deal, but now it’s getting what it asked for – fierce competition.
Remember how a few weeks ago Midwest announced that it was trimming its mainline fleet from 25 to 9 717s, and would be replacing some of those with E170s?
The pilots at Midwest (represented by ALPA) aren’t too pleased with the move, and have filed a grievance. Here’s the main issue – initially, the E170s will be flown by Republic Airlines, meaing some Midwest pilots will lose their jobs.
The plan is to eventually have the E170s flown under Midwest’s operating certificate by Midwest pilots, though the union has a point about that as well:
When the deal with Republic was announced earlier this month, management said that Midwest pilots might operate the EMB 170s in the future on the condition that the pilots acquiesce to significant economic demands before management would be willing to petition the FAA to permit Midwest to add the Embraer fleet to its operating certificate.
We’ll certainly have to see how this develops…according the news story I found an arbitrator will be reviewing the matter in 30 days.
Yesterday, Midwest announced a deal with Republic airlines. Naturally, each company issued a press release. I happened to read Republic’s first. It announced that twelve of its E-170 aircraft would be head over to Midwest as Midwest Connect (I’m guessing these will be some of the aircraft Republic was operating for Frontier but I’m not positive). The aircraft could be leased by Midwest under their own operating certificate if they wished. The press release also stated that Midwest will pay for fuel and “will purchase all capacity at predetermined rates and will directly pay or reimburse Republic for industry standard pass-through costs.” That’s a really good deal, especially when it is considered that some regional airlines fly routes at their own risk. In addition Republic is providing an immediate $15 million loan to Midwest with an additional $10 million possible in the future. Overall, this is a great deal for Republic, I think.
After reading that press release, I was fairly opitmistic about Midwest. I thought that these additional aircraft could be used to grow the airline’s route network after it cut so many cities, primarily due to dumping the MD-80 fleet. (Cranky has a good post on that, by the way.)
But the Midwest press release goes into so much more detail. The airline has renogiated its 717 leases and is returning 16 of them to Boeing, leaving nine behind. The twelve E170s will be taking their place. Eventually Midwest plans to operate those aircraft under their own operating certificate.
In terms of seats, this move isn’t a huge change in capacity. Right now Midwest has 25 717s configured with 88 seats, a total of 2,200. It is reconfiguring the other 717s to have 99 seats, and the E170s have 76 seats, for a total of 2,100. But either way, there is a net loss of four aircraft. This isn’t counting the CRJs, of course. As far as I know, the number of those aircraft will not change.
Also, Midwest is raising its second bag fee from $20 to $25 and introducing a first bag fee of $15. I’m not sure how well that will work. My father had to fly three legs on E-Jets last week and was impressed by the number of gate checks of carry-ons that couldn’t fit in the overhead bins. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the same on Midwest, but we’ll have to see.
It is sad that Midwest has had to cut so much recently. Personally I still think it should have accepted AirTran’s deal.
On a side note this is the second time Republic has offered financing recently. I wonder what else is up the company’s sleeve, if anything.
Edit: Brett Snyder also posted on this topic on his Cranky Flier and BNET blog. He suggests that the E170s could eventually fly as Delta connection once Northwest and Delta merge, which is something I wish I would have thought of before writing my post! Take a look here and here.
I remember that when Midwest fought off AirTran’s takeover bid that some speculated that AirTran really didn’t need Midwest anyway, and could just expand without them. Well, that seems to be coming true now. Cranky has a good post on what markets Midwest is cutting. Some of these cities include Ft. Lauderdale, Ft. Myers, and Baltimore. AirTran is moving into Ft. Lauderdale from Milwaukee and increasing Ft. Myers (only once a week to twice daily) and Baltimore (one daily seasonal flight to two daily flights year-round).
I don’t know what frequency reductions Midwest is making, but AirTran is also making increases in Tampa, Orlando, and Las Vegas flights out of Milwaukee. These are all markets Midwest serves, too.
Saving the cookie seems to be backfiring…
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