Originally Posted by
adamj023
It won't be Alaska Airlines.
JetBlue or Virgin America most likely candidates on the Frontier route.
I was looking at a cheap fare myself that frontier had one time and the problem with Frontier was the size of the route network.
Virgin America or JetBlue will be the acquisition here. Spirit will be the least likely and I wish Spirit would sell out to someone else quite frankly who can install larger seating on those planes and run it better. I wouldn't fly Spirit.
I agree it won't be Alaska. Their CASM is actually a fair bit higher than Frontier's (though they make up for it). A purchase by Alaska would make Frontier even less profitable.
Virgin is out. They just don't have the cash (and they would be fools to go borrow it).
JetBlue ... meh. The CASM is about the same. Similar fleet (including IFE, which is a major expense to install), fills a large hole in their route network. The downside is JetBlue has never used regionals to feed their operations, and Frontier does, and that brings in a new level of complexity (that JB might not want. Why fix what isn't broken?). Then there is, of course SWA. Costs aren't Frontier's problem, yields are, so why would B6 want to toss a lot of money into a yield sinkhole? If F9 can't get better yields than SWA (when I believe F9 has the better product) in Denver, I doubt B6 can.
UA, DL, and AA are out. Already too big, already too big, and broke.
US ... another meh. More for the planes than anything else. Unless UA draws down DEN and US "replaces" them, since US can better compete with SWA on a strictly CASM basis (as they have in PHX for years, and recently "won" a rare victory in PHL against SWA).
Spirit? I could see it. While you may not fly Spirit (and I probably wouldn't either) many people do. $9 fares are hard to resist, even with all the add-ons.