Cookies, service part of battle for Midwest Air

“In the last six years, even the airlines that call themselves full service scaled back to the bones, so any time you have any service at all it stands out for people,” Jenkins said.

Skornicka said the company always reminds staffers to be courteous to customers, and that’s what passengers voiced concerns about after the takeover bid was announced.

“We tell our flight attendants that their job is to treat their customers as if they were a guest in their own home,” Skornicka said.

Times always haven’t been easy for Midwest. The airline faced delisting from the New York Stock Exchange in 2005 for several reasons, including dipping shares that valued it at about $50 million, less than the $75 million for 30 days in a row needed to remain on the exchange.

Midwest didn’t wait to be delisted and in September 2005 switched to the American Stock Exchange, where shares have traded in the past year from a low of $4 to a close of $13.45 on Friday.

Midwest recently ended a string of quarterly losses dating to the third quarter of 2003, posting profits of $8.8 million in the second quarter of 2006 and most recently, $1.6 million.

AirTran’s Leonard has predicted the combined company would reach $3.5 billion in revenues and have 15,000 employees by the end of 2007.

Midwest is about half the size of AirTran, with 3,500 employees, compared with AirTran’s 8,000 employees.

AirTran operates 700 flights a day to 50 cities. Leonard envisions the combined company having 1,000 departures a day in 74 cities.

Mergers aside, both airlines are coupling with other carriers to expand their service. AirTran has partnered with Frontier Airlines Holdings Inc. to encourage passengers to connect from one carrier to the other.

Midwest just signed a five-year agreement with SkyWest Airlines to operate between 15 and 25 Canadair Regional Jets for Midwest and add new destinations. The company’s growth plan announced recently calls for increasing capacity by 15 percent this year and adding six new destinations.

Travelers like Dave Berryman said they’re worried a merger with AirTran or another low-cost carrier would mean the end of Midwest’s comfortable service. Berryman, 47, is a technical salesman who travels once a week from his home in Indianapolis throughout the region.

“They have small airplanes, comfortable seats and the people are pleasant,” he said of Midwest. “It’s businesslike.”

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