Carrier will stop Chicago flights by June

ATA Airlines, which has been shrinking its scheduled passenger system in recent months, said it will discontinue all scheduled service at Chicago’s Midway Airport by early June. ATA has been operating at Midway since 1992; during the 1990s, it was one of the largest carriers there, using the close-in Chicago airport as the hub for a nationwide route network which was then in its ascendancy, and helping build Midway’s reputation as the low-cost carrier alternative to O’Hare. Now Southwest Airlines – which has a code-share partnership with ATA – is a major player at Midway. Within the past few months, ATA stopped flying form Midway to Washington Reagan National, New York LaGuardia and Ontario, California. Now the airline said it will discontinue domestic scheduled service on April 14 from Midway to Oakland and Dallas/Ft. Worth; and on June 7 to Cancun and Guadalajara, Mexico. ATA will still operate its west coast-to-Hawaii services, which are fed by Southwest Airlines’ domestic network. ATA said it will redeploy the Midway aircraft in charter service. ATA is also trying another niche: On March 15, it will begin scheduled service from Miami to Guatemala City and to San Jose, Costa Rica, although the service will be marketed by an entity called USALatin Sky.