Yeah, at $19, they're basically giving you the ticket for about $10 and hoping to make something from you on ancillary revenue. I think Frontier's cost per seat mile is a little more than 7 cents. While very low by industry standards, it still means that, for my 1200 mile trip, it costs them about $90 to fly every seat on that airplane (whether full or not). It's seems a very long way from $10 to $90 breakeven.

I would think that, perhaps, an ULCC could sell some seats on my route for $59 off-peak -- which would still be an incredible fare to fly 1200 miles -- and break even. I don't see how it makes sense to do any flying where you're going to discount down to $19. That just doesn't seem like a sustainable business model to me. If that's what it takes to fill the plane up, the route is just too marginal, or the competition too intense.

Meanwhile, they're training customers like me to only buy their tickets when they go to basically zero. That can't be good for business, either.

EDIT
Coincidentally, I just ran into an article that said "flash" airline sales are actually declining in number. I don't think they're subscribing to Frontier's marketing emails!

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...112-story.html