Originally Posted by
rhwbullhead
I wonder the same thing, but having flown recently with a few people, I think I understand how the average traveler thinks when booking Frontier. I've tried to tell these people to do stuff like check in at the absolute last moment, as they usually fill the middle seats first. Several friends say they don't want to risk it so they want to pay for the seat. I'm sure others get upsold with the way check-in or booking is set up to direct you to the upgrade buttons and then asking if you're sure you want to risk not having a seat assignment.
Last quarter, Frontier claimed they received $66.70 in ancillary revenue per passenger. That seems quite high -- since if you're paying that you might be better off flying a major airline. A little bit of that is likely fake. Like I recently bought tickets for my wife and I to fly to Florida. For both tickets, we paid a grand total of $45.96 (less than $23 a ticket). They didn't get to keep much of that, getting only $7.60 in "airfare" and $7.20 in a "carrier interface charge" -- the latter of which I assume they lump into "ancillary revenue," even though it's a ticketing fee that passengers can't really avoid. The rest is government taxes. Apparently most passengers do buy stuff like bags and seats from them. It still doesn't look like much of a business to me.