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Republic Airways Holdings, owners of Frontier and Midwest Airlines, has advised that the two carriers will merge, operating as Frontier Airlines. It means that the distinctive animal mascot tails of Frontier will remain. For those of you afraid about the loss of the signature cookies, Midwest’s signature fresh-baked cookies will be rolled out to Frontier soon. Repubican CEO Bryan Bedford promised that Frontier would add a plane with Wisconsin’s state animal, the badger, but this will take time as “it’s hard to find a cute badger.”
The Midwest Brand will be slowly phased out. Midwest, also known as the Cookie for the fresh-baked cookies it served, once used the tagline, “The Best Care in the Air.” However, after it fended off a takeover in 2008 by Airtran, which is now building a presence in Milwaukee on its own, Midwest suffered due to record high fuel costs and returned many its planes. By the time Republic bought it, it was only a small step to cease to flying on its own and subcontracting all of its flights out to Republic crews.
Thus, Midwest is effectively already gone. But Republic is moving some of the Frontier operation to Milwaukee. While the Midwest Headquarters is being vacated in favor of office space at the airport, Frontier’s Airbus maintenance is being relocated to Milwaukee. Midwest began in 1984, as Midwest Express, growing out of the Kimberly Clark travel department. It survived for 25 years before being bought out.
Rest in Peace, Midwest. May your seats be wide and your cookies be forever warm.
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