That's really unfortunate as it seemed to me at least that Frontier excelled with their Airbus operations, this almost seems a step backwards from the direction they were going with the fleet. They ordered A320's because the added capacity was needed on certain routes and cut down the A318 fleet size because they didn't need that level of capacity combined with the operating costs for the A318. Frontier was trying to get away from the smaller aircraft they operated in favor of bigger aircraft, and now an announcement that they're ordering more A318 sized aircraft just makes very little sense. Just a guess, but it seems to me that perhaps Republic is going to use the Airbus fleet on routes where the capacity and range is absolutely needed and the CSeries where the capacity isn't needed nor the range.

Let's hope Bombardier can deliver on their range/fuel burn numbers otherwise this large order may seem like a bad idea when the time comes. Not to say I don't think it's a bad idea now, but I suppose when you're flying in and out of Milwaukee smaller planes might be needed.