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Midwest Airlines (Milwaukee) announced the launch of nonstop seasonal service between its Milwaukee hub and both San Diego and Seattle/Tacoma.

The new San Diego service takes off on April 19 and the new Seattle/Tacoma service begins May 14. Midwest does not currently serve San Diego, though one-stop service is available via Denver on Frontier. The nonstop seasonal service to Seattle/Tacoma is in addition to one-stop service already offered by Midwest and Frontier. The new nonstop San Diego and Seattle/Tacoma flights join Midwest’s existing nonstop service to Los Angeles and nonstop seasonal service to San Francisco beginning April 19.

Since Midwest Airlines is no longer an airline (only a brand), service to San Diego will be provided by 136-seat Airbus A319 aircraft operated by Frontier Airlines (2nd) (Denver) and service to Seattle/Tacoma will be provided by 99-seat Embraer ERJ 190 aircraft operated by Republic Airlines (2nd).

With the gutting of Midwest Airlines and Frontier Airlines now flying “Midwest” routes, Republic Airways Holdings is facing a “brand confusion” situation with its customers, especially in Milwaukee and Denver. The holding company is now admitting it has a problem and is doing some customer polling. In our opinion the Midwest brand is nearly worthless these days and our prediction is all non-contract flying will become “Frontier Airlines”. Therefore anything still around with “Midwest” could become rare.

Here is a good article by The Denver Post on this subject:

www.denverpost.com/business/ci_14438940?source=rss