Hello. My name is Travis, and I'm known ingame as ArmySoldier. I am the CEO of the Badger Airlines Corporation. On behalf of the corporation, I am applying for membership with Rising Union. Badger Airlines was formed on October 8th, 2017. We have grown to a fleet of 100 and have transported over 2.5 million passengers. We operate the 737 and CRJ families. We had 8 Airbus 319s in the fleet, but we have phased them out to save a maintenance category. They were replaced with newer 737s. Our average aircraft age is 9.5 years. We are planning on slowly replacing older aircraft with newer versions of the same family. We are also hoping to expand our domestic operations and hopefully break into the international market. That is why we are applying for membership with the RU; we realize that the only viable way to run profitable long haul international operations is with a strong international interlining agreement. Badger Airlines operates hubs out of BWI and IAH. We interline with random airlines, but we are willing to completely restructure our interlining agreements to be in alignment with the alliance. As the CEO, I am open to any and all messages, either in game or on this forum. Thank you for reading, and for considering the application. Hope to hear from you soon!

Hi Travis,

thank you for your application, and nice to see you again. IIRC we already had a partnership with an earlier incarnation of your airline.

As always, your application will be discussed internally, and if the result is positive you will be notified in this thread and can proceed to the ingame application. Any questions from members regarding your airline will also be posted here, so please check in more or less frequently. The discussion may or may not take some time, please bear with us.

Regarding the situation in the USA: As you will probably know the Rising Union (i.e. the Ganesha Group) is already predominant in the USA with a total market share of around 75%. From my point of view adding another US airline will only make sense if the new airline is willing to cooperate extensively (i.e. communicate actively, make agreements and stick to them). Of course the Ganesha Group will also stick to any agreements made. Actually I think that's part of the fun of being in an alliance.

BWI happens to be not a hub of the Ganesha Group (as opposed to most large US airports), that's a good start. For IAH we need an agreement, but I am sure we can work something out. Regarding future growth, the Ganesha Group is willing to help you identify new opportunities and if needed reduce its own presence at selected airports to leave room for you (this includes IAH). But right now we transport about 64 times more passengers per week than your airline, so obviously a relationship at eye level is only possible if you stick to a niche (e.g. BWI) for the time being. If that's ok with you I'm more than willing to discuss options.

Thank you for reaching out. I also believe we have been aligned before in the past. That being said, this current iteration of Badger is my strongest airline to date. It is my longest running and healthiest. Knock on wood, but I think I have finally found a decent strategy. As of right now, I would not ask for you to alter your presence in IAH or any other market. I would want to compliment our route networks, not hinder them.

To that end, here are some points I would like to make, in no particular order.
1. I have 987 weekly departures out of IAH.
1a. These departures are spread out between 23 737s and 25 CRJs.
1b. I am currently interlining with IAH's second largest airline- US Wings. This was an IL that was started in my airline's infancy (just one of the random ILs I sent out). I would be willing to discontinue that IL and instead IL with you.
1c. While some of these routes parallel yours, there are 92 cities out of IAH that I am the SOLE operator on. I would like to maintain my current presence in IAH. I would be willing to discuss and come to agreement on what the future of IAH would look like, but I would like to, at a minimum, maintain my current presence in IAH. That brings me to point 2.
2. With the exception of the aforementioned IAH operation that would be discussed and agreed upon on a case by case basis before expansion, I would focus any and all new aircraft to my BWI hub. I would expand well performing routes, add smaller cities with CRJs, and add international routes with the 739ER. I'd be willing to make BWI my "fortress" hub and create a widespread network out of there.

How do these points sound? In short, I'd maintain the status quo of IAH and rapidly expand BWI.

Complementing our route networks is the way to go. Right now, apart from some legacy routes flown by acquired airlines, all my operations at BWI are connections to own US hubs or European alliance hubs where the hub operator doesn't have transatlantic rights. I would obviously not open any new routes from BWI but may increase the capacity on existing routes to my hubs.

@IAH we have the situation that many of your routes are new, so you will probably want to make some adjustments depending on the success of these routes. Problem ist, you can't really judge the success before you have an IL with Ganesha Air and ideally Free Wings Chicago, too. So you may want to close these ILs first (replacing the US Wings IL). I have sent you IL request. Please check the projected cost for these ILs before signing the contracts. Interlining with Ganesha will cost you, and if that's a problem then we should find a solution for that first.

Thank you for the IL requests. I have accepted both and canceled the US Wings IL.

Hi Travis, can I ask you for a few days more patience? We want to give everyone in the alliance enough time to contribute to the internal discussion. I reckon that by the end of the weekend we will have a decision, and so far there is no indication that it could be negative.

Hi Travis,
our internal discussions are now finished. Please apply ingame for your RU membership.
You should also register as a user in this forum, so that we can grant you access to the internal boards.

Best regards and welcome aboard,
Frank