Originally Posted by
Visconti
Yeah, doesn't seem very to have any correlation with "Frontier," at least not on the surface.
Many airline codes don't seem to relate with the name although many older airlines do. I'm not sure what code Frontier might have preferred but a lot of the F codes had already been taken. The obvious FR code was already assigned to Ryan Air, no obvious corelation there. FT should have been avaliable. The only way to be sure would be to find someone who was there when it was founded and ask them.
There is a story that when Southwest was founded the person who went to make the application discovered SW was not available. Air Namibia already had it, again no obvious connection except Air Namibia was started as South West Air Transport. Herb told them to just take the next code which was WN. I've never been sure if that story is true or part of legand, there are afew variations.
There had been a previous Frontier Airlines which was founded in 1950 and ceased operations in 1988. It's code was FL which was later used by Airtran after Valujet bought Airtran and changed its name. ValuJet used the code V7.
The point of all this is that there is no particular corelation between the code and the name of the airline.