Any reason to avoid Frontier?
 

Is Frontier a safe bet to be flying Christmas time? Am thinking of booking 4 tickets IND to CUN then. Am use to worrying about legacy carriers. Always feel safe with Southwest. Is Frontier financially sound?

Any reason to avoid Frontier?

...my only reason to avoid flying them in late December would be based upon the idea of snow/ice fouling up their Denver hub. Even if you are on the nonstop, that plane probably goes thru Denver at some point. Then again, Denver is used to getting lots of snow, so they have a good handle on it. :p

Thanks HappyCoachFlyer.

Welcome to Flyer Talk. It is a great community.

Hope to see you around.

Financially speaking, they are sound. Even though they have been losing money the past few quarters, they have a lot of cash on hand (for an airline of its size) and I can't see them "going under" unless something really drastic happens.

I fly F9 90% of the time and I have never once worried about their financial stability.

Now that you brought it up...I guess I should start looking for Thanksgiving and X-mas flights home...

Notice my disclosure
 

I personally own F9 stock so I'm a bit biased on this.

F9 does have a good cash basis and from what I can tell, will turn cash flow positive when crude and jet prices drop far enough. F9 has pricing power over WN due to having much nicer service than WN (Individual DirectTV, newer planes) so more of the price hikes due to fuel have been sticking. There is also a lack of old retirees and pensions draining cash out of the mainline operations through benefits. This is hurting all the legacy carriers (unless they went BK to get rid of them) but F9, B6 and others don't have these obligations.

A note on snow/ice. Living in DEN, there are few times when the airport operations are hindered due to weather but not that many. The biggest concern is ice due to the landing speed/noise restrictions at the airport. November and December are great months to fly through DEN as Colorado gets most of it's snow from February through April. Stapleton had a bad repuation due to age and being close to the city center limited approach directions. DIA is wide open except for the noise restrictions. Enjoy Mexico but don't drink the water.

DEN is more likely to have wx delays in the summer because of thunderstorms than snow delays in the winter. I just flew back from Cabo on F9, and had a great trip. DirectTv is free. ^

definately...

All the Frontier planes I have been on have been impeccable. It sure beats a UA 737 but I've been stuck waiting for flights since there aren't often a lot of standby options versus UA or AA.

My experience is that Frontier has been substanially less expensive on XMAS time than UA as well. They have been good. Seems to me that a weather delay can get you on any airline. Could be snowing in Chicago, thus delaying planes on United. It could be raining in Vegas, thus delaying Southwest. Nobody can predict what the weather will be near XMAS this far out, so its a crap shoot either way. The wrong storm in the wrong place is going to get one airline or another in varying ways.

I bought three seats at $558 each. Alternative seats out of SDF or IND would have cost far more. And the extra seat space (33 pitch, 18 wide) compared to most alternatives will be nice on a 3hr 30min flight.

Buying was not pretty. I gave my dates and asked to be shown schedules. I did not pay attention to the sort by price selection. I picked low cost fligts at good times and entered profiles saying two of us liked aisle seats and one a window. I had no chance to pick seats. Suddenly we had 11 C, D and E and no way to change seats.

So I called and a friendly, helpful, understandable lady answered 14 minutes later. While on hold, I was given regular waiting time updates.

She immediately set about changing the seats. I told her that on the 23rd we did not all have to be in the same row. She said that my reservations were on the 24th!!!

Ouch. It appears that by price shows you nearby dates not just selected date. However, since I had called so soon after making the reservation, she said that she would call whoever she needed to and get it fixed. Because it was an international flight, she warned this could take a bit.

Ten minutes later she checked in and said almost done. In 5 more she said that the new seats were $87 more (the $558 includes that $87) and that price was less than what the web site then showed for the proper days. So I said Ok and we soon had acceptable seats and an email confirmation with ticket numbers on it. Also VirtuallyThere shows the right schedule and seats.

We are together in C,D & F of row 16 going and 13 returning. Where I'd like to be up front, I have no status there and being together has some pluses. The flight is a non-stop so we do not have to rush off to make a connection.

Anyhow, wanting to change seats likely saved me a lot of grief. I appreciated the attitude of the F9 call center and look forward to flying with them. Wish they flew NYC to CUN as well so that I could book my daughter with them.

Glad to have you on board, mshaikun ! :)

You can always request seats that are currently blocked from assignment on the day of departure. Usually about the first 1/3 of the aircraft is blocked for check-in or Ascent/Summit member assignment.

actually, F9 does fly LGA via DEN to CUN. the outbound segment has a long layover in DEN, but the return segment isn't so bad. don't know your return info, so i can't tell you how much the ticket would cost.

you have PM. :)

Joe

Thanks for the PM.

The price via Denver is much higher. From NYC non-stop is under 4 hours and stopping in Atlanta or Miami around 6. F9 via Denver is way longer.

We look forward to our first F9 adventure even though it means a 2 hour drive to IND. Would love to see it start servicing SDF, but do not expect to see that soon. WN has done very well out of SDF.

Thanks for flying with Frontier! :) Keep in mind that DirecTV is complimentary on all of our Mexico and ANC flights, although the signal is lost sometime over the border. You will also have a chance to purchase one of 3 first-run pay per view movies. I hope you enjoy your experience and vacation! :)

Maybe my experience was an exception, but I was recently re-routed onto F9 MKE-DEN-SFO. Both planes I was on were very worn and fairly dirty. I was suprised, but perhaps I was just on an older aircraft.

The DirectTV is great! I'd MUCH rather be able to watch something that interests me (Discovery, History Chanel+ 22 others) and that's live than have only one (or a few) lame movie to choose from.