Originally Posted by
whlinder
Agree on the sucky airline part and if you are hit with those situations then you likely aren't ever going back. I'm not personally ever flying F9 unless it is a massive savings in money or time. It just feels like unless those events happens with a certain frequency (like it used to for Spirit, giving Spirit their current brand perception) there will be a market subset which will find some value in F9 and F9 will have that slightly lower cost basis to operate with.
Additionally we all know that the willingness to pay for a better experience is not guaranteed to last.
Everything I see -- and the comments I hear on the earnings calls -- tells me that a large number of people are willing to pay airlines a lot of money for a marginally better product. Like the international airlines are making good money on "premium economy": a product that is maybe 25% better than coach but sells for 2 or 3x coach airfares. And that -- along with the credit card deals with the big banks -- is a huge problem for Frontier. Frontier is trying to scramble to offer "higher end" service -- adding things like first class seats, for example -- but at the end of the day, they are a bad airline that any rational person would demand a huge discount to fly. Like my average domestic fare on Frontier is about 30 bucks. At 100 bucks, i'm not interested in flying them at all. I'm sure most people have higher price points, but this is obviously not a recipe for financial success.