Bye-bye Midwest Airlines; new owner to use Frontier Airlines name for both operations

Midwest Airlines name dropped in favor of Frontier

MINNEAPOLIS — The Midwest Airlines name is going away.

Republic Airways Holdings Inc., which owns both Midwest and Frontier Airlines, said on Tuesday that it will use the Frontier name for its traditional airline business. The name of the company remains Republic, and it will continue to run feeder carriers operated under contract for other airlines.

Republic CEO Bryan Bedford said in an interview that travelers associated the Frontier name with low fares, while Midwest was seen as more of a high-price airline. That was an important consideration at Midwest’s Milwaukee base, which has become a hot spot of competition with low-cost carriers Southwest Airlines and AirTran.

Bedford said travelers may see the Midwest name on some jets until October 2011. The company is also merging the two frequent-flier programs.

Republic bought Midwest last summer, and then bought Denver-based Frontier out of bankruptcy protection in October. Bedford said at the time that it planned to keep both brands. But on Tuesday, he said every technology or customer service change was multiplied by two.

“We just can’t have double the spending in order to actually run our business,” he said. “Maintaining two brands is just not cost-effective for us.”

Midwest grew out of the travel department of Kimberly-Clark Corp., and began flying as Midwest Express Airlines in 1984. The next year, one of its three aircraft crashed just after taking off from Milwaukee, killing all 31 people on board.

Midwest survived that disaster and the operation grew to 341 flights a day and 3,500 employees by 2007. That year, it fought off repeated takeover attempt by AirTran Holdings Inc. The fuel price spike over the summer of 2008 hurt its finances more.

But customers in Milwaukee and around the middle of the country were loyal. Its tagline was “The best care in the air.” Passengers got warm chocolate chip cookies and roomy leather seats.

Midwest was struggling last summer when Republic bought it for $31 million. By then, Republic was already doing some of Midwest’s flying. By the end of the year, Republic grounded Midwest’s old fleet and did all of Midwest’s flying with Republic planes and crews, laying off the Midwest aircrews. Then on Tuesday Bedford traveled to Milwaukee to announce the end of the Midwest Airlines name.

“You could hear the sound of the curtain falling in this town,” said Jay Sorensen, a one-time Midwest executive who now works as an airline consultant and lives near Milwaukee.

The 1985 crash would have been the end of a lot of upstart airlines, but travelers in Wisconsin rallied around Midwest, Sorensen said.

“This community knew it was lucky to have an airline based here, because it’s not a major hub town and it’s in the shadow of Chicago, and yet somehow we got it,” he said.

Denver kept its airline’s name, but hundreds of Frontier jobs are being lost or shifted to Milwaukee. Republic is moving its Airbus maintenance operation to Milwaukee, preserving some Midwest Airlines maintenance jobs while prompting a fight with the mechanic’s union at Frontier. Republic is moving the last of the jobs out of the Midwest Airlines building in Oak Creek, Wis., since it has so much space available at the airport, Bedford said.

The Republic CEO said Midwest’s famous chocolate-chip cookies will be served on all Frontier planes. Wi-fi will be available on the Republic-operated planes, and may expand later to the Frontier-operated fleet, Bedford said.

The company said in January it would pick between the Frontier and Midwest names. Bedford said travelers in Milwaukee seemed more willing to part with the Midwest name. In Frontier’s home base of Denver last month, dozens of people marched to keep the Frontier name and the pictures of “spokesanimals” on the tails of its planes like “Larry the Lynx” or “Grizwald the Bear.”

“Frontier just has a much stronger emotional connection with the folks there,” he said.

Bedford said Frontier will add a plane with Wisconsin’s state animal, the badger. It wasn’t as easy as some of the other animals on its planes.

“It’s hard to find a cute badger,” he said.