Site Admin

Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 2316
Location: Indianapolis, IN

AirTran is ending MKE-DCA service which I believe was twice daily. Isn't this a use it or lose it situation? Meaning the routes will have to be immediately transferred to another destination or FL will lose the slots. Where are these going to go? At one time FL tried to get IND-DCA approved. Think they will try again? It didn't take long for FL to hack up MKE. For September they are at 8 destinations with only 6 of them having daily nonstop service. That is 11 daily nonstop flights with 3 others scattered through the week.

They really need to commit. They gave that less of a commitment than they did MDW.

Site Admin

Joined: 17 Jun 2005
Posts: 949
Location: Carmel, IN

I think you're right about the slots. But I doubt they try to run IND-DCA. There is already US and NW running that route. And you've got UA running IND-IAD, plus WN running IND-BWI. That pretty well sops up all the demand from IND to Washington, DC area.

If it were up to me, I'd look at MSY-DCA. Only US flies this route, 358 seats on 4 daily n/s flights, pricing around $450 one way. Faremeasure says 685 avg pax per day, but it doesn't split between DCA and IAD. UA flies 210 seats per day MSY-IAD, average pricing around $440 one way. So that leaves a theoretical average 117 pax/day on that route. I think FL could easily make 2 flights per day work, competitively priced at $249 one way. That's what I'd do if I ran the world.

Site Admin

Joined: 15 Jun 2005
Posts: 2316
Location: Indianapolis, IN

They applied for IND-DCA before and got rejected. Traffic on that route is no different today than it was back then. Especially if they are looking to provide connections to the west coast like they were the first time they tried. I'm not sure how well MKE is doing. They may be looking at IND again. According to data in airliners.net the RASM out of MKE was really bad for FL. Adjusted for segment length the best MKE route ranked something like 46th out of all the FL routes. Straight RASM the best MKE route was in the 90's. I don't think MKE is going to last for them.