Could Midwest Express Return To The Skies?

While we’re used to airlines either shutting down or getting swallowed up in mergers, one recently defunct carrier may be rising from the ashes: There’s an effort to bring back Midwest Express, an airline perhaps best known by its fans for serving warm — baked-on-board — chocolate chip cookies.

Returning to the skies

Two business partners have started a site called FlyMidwestExpess.com and are planning to get the carrier — which changed its name to Midwest Airlines in 2002 before it was eventually gobbled up by Frontier — up and running again.

Noting that there are fewer flights out of Milwaukee’s Mitchell International Airport, making already annoying travel “more of a hassle,” the folks behind the effort say they’re “working hard to bring back Midwest Express.”

“With convenient destinations for business travelers, roomy seats, WiFi and friendly people who care about you, it’s going to help you plan your travel more efficiently,” the site says. “Flights to many of our destinations will allow you to travel out and back on the same day, getting you back home at night, instead of being away.”

Money matters

Launching a new airline is not cheap — it could cost at least $100 million, industry experts told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel — but the people behind Midwest’s resurrection are remaining tight-lipped on their fundraising progress.

“We have a number of people we are working with, and because of that we can’t really make any announcement,” one of the business partners explained to the newspaper.

As for the big question everyone is asking, it sounds like the free cookies may also make a comeback.

“More details will be coming soon. We can’t wait to get in the air!” the site reads, adding, “Oh, and by the way, we haven’t forgotten the cookies!”

Comeback kids

This isn’t the first time someone has tried to revive a defunct airline. In 2014, Eastern Air Lines Group filed paperwork to begin the long process of beginning service again, more than 20 years away from the tarmac.

It currently operates out of Miami and flies to destinations including Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist