I bought a Frontier ticket today for the first time in a couple years. I paid $15 to fly MIA-PHL. This is, of course, absurd. I think the last time I bought an airline ticket for $15 was with SkyBus. I never got to fly that one, though: they went out of business before my travel date.

I'm starting to wonder what exactly F9's business plan is here. Offer insanely low fares to attract attention, and hope to sell the $15 customers lots of ancillary services? Um. OK, but wouldn't it make more sense to just offer everyday (profitable) fares that people want to buy?

I've also noticed that the big boys have started going after Frontier with a vengeance. After a year of absolutely no junk domestic fares, we're seeing airlines like AA match (at least to some extent) F9's prices. This has got to be hurting F9 pretty badly, because nobody in their right mind would fly F9 (or Spirit, etc.) if you could fly a "normal" airline for about the same price.

It's certainly an interesting story. Honestly, I would normally bet on an F9 bankruptcy here (we've certainly seen this movie before), but I don't think that's possible given the very low price of oil and the general lack of competition in the domestic USA airline industry. Basically, it's impossible right now to run a money-losing USA airline. But Frontier sure seems to be trying.