Milwaukee's Airport Lures Chicago Travelers with SkyMail

By Ali Trachta in Miscellaneous on Jun 23, 2008 9:37PM

Those 'Sconnies are slick. The powers that be at Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport took full advantage of the hullabaloo at Wrigley Field this weekend to promote Skymailme.com, a website dedicated to luring Chicagoans away from O’Hare and over the border when searching for airfare.

The site allows you to send friends a personalized electronic SkyMail message, which once received, leads viewers to then visit FlyMKE.com. At that site, travelers can compare airfare to various cities leaving from Milwaukee or from O’Hare, and also check prices on parking and car rentals to see which airport offers the better deal. Per the Trib, currently 5 percent of the General Mitchell’s customers are northern Illinois residents, and it has long billed itself as Chicago’s “third airport.” Considering O'Hare has one of the worst on-time rates in the country, along with the fact that airfare in general is skyrocketing, its likely many travelers are looking for cheaper and more reliable air travel alternatives.

We gave Skymailme's electronic air messages a go, and it left a little to be desired. Let’s just say, it's no Monk-E-Mail. However, we also checked out FlyMKE.com and discovered our new best friend Mitchell could save us $199 on our next trip to L.A. Hmmm…

Apparently Chicago's famous winds weren’t taking kindly to Milwaukee’s come-hither message, and the air-o-gram began to unravel before it was completed.

Photo by leah.jones.