WN adds flights Den-MDW, Runs UA / AA out

Borescope

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Jan 10, 2003
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United ending Midway service
Decision follows American's exit

By Mark Skertic
Tribune staff reporter
Published June 7, 2006

United Airlines is pulling out of Midway International Airport, following a similar move announced last month by American Airlines.

United restarted commercial service from Midway last year, but a lack of business prompted the withdrawal, Robin Urbanski, spokeswoman for the carrier, said Tuesday.

"We've had limited customer interest from Midway," she said.

United's last flight from Midway will be on Sept. 5. In May, American Airlines announced it will cease its service from the Southwest Side airport on Sept. 1.

The loss of American, followed by United's departure a few days later, is more symbolic than substantive for the local aviation market. Both airlines offer hundreds of daily flights from O'Hare International Airport, but each has only five daily departures from Midway.

Neither accounts for more than 1 percent of the passenger market share at Midway, according to the city's Department of Aviation. Southwest Airlines dominates with 71 percent of the Midway market, followed by ATA Airlines with 11.2 percent, and AirTran Airways with 6.3 percent.

United shares one of Midway's three city-controlled gates.

"The subsequent change in gate utilization will provide opportunity for additional service expansion at Midway by existing airlines and new entrant carriers," said Chicago Aviation Commissioner Nuria Fernandez.

Three of United's Midway departures are by United's discount carrier, Ted, to Denver. The other two are on United Express regional jets serving Washington, D.C.'s Dulles International Airport.

Both are markets served by other airlines at Midway.

Customers who have made reservations after Sept. 5 will be rescheduled on flights from O'Hare, Urbanski said. A decision on where to redeploy the planes that serve Midway has not been made.

United returned to Midway in April 2005 after a 13-year absence. At the time, each of the daily flights was on United's Ted line. The decision to shift the Washington market to smaller regional jets was the first acknowledgement that customer interest was not strong.

The problem was not the dominance of discount carriers at Midway, Urbanski said.

"We compete with low-cost carriers in about 80 percent of our markets," she said. "Even when you're at O'Hare, you compete with Southwest. This just boiled down to low customer interest in Midway to Denver and Midway to Dulles."

The distinction between Midway and O'Hare mirrors what has occurred in other urban areas served by two large airports, said airline analyst Robert Mann. Low-cost carriers dominate one, while the other tends to be served by large network carriers.

While discount carriers like Southwest provide point-to-point service, United and other legacy carriers are part of a network with a potentially global reach, he said.

"It's really about what customers want," Mann said. "If customers want international out of Chicago, it's obvious where you're going. You're going up north [to O'Hare]. If they want a point-to-point destination, you have a pick-of-the-litter choice."
 
Well, if you subscribe to the S-Curve theory, a lack of traffic for UA (and also AA) means that Southwest is getting larger than their fair share of the traffic. With no connecting feed to/from UA's MDW flights, it's no surprise that they are not performing on a segment basis. And there's just no beyond value to them on the MDW end. And they probably weren't adding much beyond value to IAD or DEN either.
 
And SWA has big expansion plans. Every time they announce new routes there is a rider that emphasizes the future. It's BWI all over again...time will tell.
 
If you think WN ran UA/AA out of MDW, then I would think you agree that UA ran WN out of SFO, not the WX delays. I agree that UA/AA made an economic decision, just like WN makes the decision not to serve SFO or DFW. They have their reasons for avoiding airports, as should UA/AA. IMO neither UA nor AA should have ever started service to MDW in the first place with their large hubs at ORD. To leave is the right decision!
 
scuba,

The ultimate success or failure of a given route is determined by the economics. Each airport has a given traffic base with which to draw from. Some bigger than others, obviously. If you are competing head to head against other competitors, than you are all after the biggest slice possible of that traffic pie. The fact that WN has a major operation (they do hate using the word "hub" to describe their large cities) at MDW means they garner a larger than fare share amount of that traffic. It also means they can feed traffic to and from their flights there. UA can't and neither could AA. Therefore, UA needed to rely on a larger amount of O & D traffic to make the route sustainable, since they don't have any connecting complexes at MDW. Sure, they could draw traffic that would connect beyond IAD and DEN, but I'd imagine that wasn't much.

If you want to say that UA ran WN out of SFO, I think that's another story. WN is a different animal than UA. The unit costs at the time of their SFO withdrawal were considerably lower than they are today and the legacy carriers like UA couldn't touch them. Therefore, WN's break-even load factor on those flights I'd imagine was quite low. I honestly believe that their decision to withdraw from SFO was actually largely determined by the high-cost of the delays they sustained there and not action by UA. If you recall, WN served SFO for quite awhile. It wasn't as if they were there for only a year or so. So I don't think the comparison you make is accurate.
 
If you think WN ran UA/AA out of MDW, then I would think you agree that UA ran WN out of SFO, not the WX delays. I agree that UA/AA made an economic decision, just like WN makes the decision not to serve SFO or DFW. They have their reasons for avoiding airports, as should UA/AA. IMO neither UA nor AA should have ever started service to MDW in the first place with their large hubs at ORD. To leave is the right decision!

Good points. But, at least, SW is not stupid enough to go in to, then out, then in to, then out, then in to , then out of markets. Ad Loseum.
 
You mean like they have with Denver?
If you are referring to SW leaving DEN, that was 1 time 20 years ago. That did not jump in and out of the market. This time it definitely looks like SW is in it for the long haul. SW re-opened DEN with more flights than they operated in DEN last time, and have now more than doubled service by August. just my thoughts........
 
I think UA and AA were pulling out of MDW due to the pending FAA change in landing distance requirements. Adding 15% will make MDW unusable for many days out of the year. Of course I suspect SWA will not let anything but the boundary fence stop them from trying to serve MDW.
 
I think UA and AA were pulling out of MDW due to the pending FAA change in landing distance requirements. Adding 15% will make MDW unusable for many days out of the year. Of course I suspect SWA will not let anything but the boundary fence stop them from trying to serve MDW.
I had a horrible thing happen today...I went to the proctologist and he said "there's a growth on your deleted by moderator."
 
Southwest has no choice but to start entering higher-revenue, and thus higher cost, markets like DEN and IAD. The revenue stream they get from using second and third tier, under-served airports no longer is sufficient, given their increasing costs. So their philosophy has now changed to enter into markets they previously wouldn't have thought about serving. They're willing to slug it out with the big kids on the block, simply because they no longer have a choice. You can also look for some significant product changes from Southwest in the next 18 months, including some form of assigned seating.
 
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significant product changes from Southwest in the next 18 months, including some form of assigned seating.
They'll study this for more than 18 months. Software changes to all their computers, mindset of their pax and a total 180 from their current business model will keep this from happening for more than a couple of years. And as their work force ages and their costs go up they can ill afford to take revenue off the table. By assigning their seats aircraft will sit on the ground longer, and as Herb said. "aircraft don't make money sitting at the gate"
 
It was TED all along............How long until this experiment get the hook?


A Case Study In Squandering Brand Equity?
United Fails In Entering Denver-Midway...
On Second Thought, Maybe They Were Never There

United has announced that it's dropping its attempt at breaking into the Denver-Chicago/Midway market.

Strange. Of the three carriers that entered the DEN-MDW market, United would at least on paper appear to hold all the cards. Or at least the best hand.

It made sense for United to initiate flights in the market to take on Frontier. First, it's got a huge feed operation at Denver. Bigger than that of Frontier, and more substantial than what Southwest (which came in last January) has on the Midway end. Next, it's got customer service that's the standard other carriers should shoot for. United also has bazillions of card-carrying MileagePlus members in both Chicago and in Denver. More than Frontier has at Denver. More than Southwest has, too. Finally, United has huge brand awareness at both ends of the route.

But when load factors are compared for the first two months of the year, however, it's clear that entering the MDW-DEN route was simply was a dud for United, even in spite of its strong brand equity in the Chicago market. A big, embarrassing dud. They got nowhere gaining market share.



So what gives? It appears that United in this case may have essentially squandered its advantages of consumer awareness because it didn't promote the MDW service as "United." Instead, it entered the market, and promoted it as "TED" - the paint-job-masquerading-as-a-separate-airline that some expensive "advisors" convinced United to pursue. Unlike most other markets where United put Ted-painted airplanes, MDW was different - it was not an established route for UA, nor was it one that was leisure-oriented. It's essentially a business market.

In a sense, the message was very possibly that United wasn't really in the market at all, and - given a 47% load factor - a lot of the public apparently believed it.

With all the advantages United should have had over its competitors in the MDW market, it's pretty difficult to otherwise explain how it ended up playing load-factor caboose, even behind ATA, whose capacity has now been replaced by Southwest.

Two of the basics of Marketing 101 are to have a clearly-defined product identity, and not to target products with perceptually different values to the same customer segment. United has succeeded in trampling on both of those basics. Although "TED" is essentially an integral operational part of the United system, and really isn't "low fare" (or low-cost) any more so than the rest of the United-painted fleet, its marketing thrust has been to try to convince the public that TED and United are two separate products.

In this case, it looks like they succeeded in doing just tha
 

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