Would Frontier considering moving from MCO to SFB?
As Frontier has chosen airports like ILG, and others, where there is no Southwest, JetBlue or Spirit, and mid size markets like GSO and MDT, would there be benefit to move the Orlando focus from MCO to SFB?
SFB would be attractive to reach Volusia County/Deltona–Daytona Beach–Ormond Beach, FL MSA and areas in eastern central Florida. It'd serve a niche in a way, while still servicing Orlando, somewhat similar to this Princeton/Trenton idea.
I see that it still within one hour of a drive from SFB to Walt Disney World, so it'd still be Orlando service but just with a twist. A deal breaker or risk would be if rental car costs are higher at SFB than at MCO.
Where there is ample MCO service from one of the bigger carriers, but no SFB service, Frontier might be able to run a route at a more attractive pricing fare than the other carrier and given that SFB is a different enough airport, the competing carrier might not bother matching the fare.
In addition to routes like TTN/ILG-MCO and some to all of the other MCO routes switching to SFB, I was thinking it might give it possibility to launch
MDW-SFB,
DTW-SFB,
CLE-SFB,
CVG-SFB,
IAD-SFB
ACY-SFB
JFK-SFB or one NYC area airport if possible
where if Frontier launched MCO service from those cities, it would competing against one or more carriers offering nothing unique and likely be disadvantaged.
Allegiant seems to have made SFB work and pax seem fine landing there; otherwise Allegiant wouldn't be running these.
Are the costs lower at SFB over MCO? Is the local population around SFB to Daytona worthwhile to capture to operate a presence from SFB to primarily cold city but some major Northeast to Midwest airports? Thoughts?
Last edited by rtalk25; Apr 27, 2013 at 7:10 pm