Frontier's non-daily schedules make no sense
Mar 3, 2019, 2:36 pm
#16
Join Date: Sep 2015
Posts: 366
There are all sorts of customers, and I know someone who is one of them. He lives minutes from TTN, but will only go United out of Newark, citing what happens if flight of day is cancelled. He'll never stay at Choice Hotels even if a given Comfort Suites is rated Excellent by users. He fits in that group, but I'm not surprised either that there are other upper income travelers who fly Spirit and Frontier, when given the choice of other network airlines, as they come to realize, it's not that bad and it's a great savings. PHLJAX falls in marginally popular. At PHL, Southwest used to compete against US Airways for a period of time on that route. PHL-JAX is a route that can probably support 1 1/2 carriers. Frontier is that 1/2.
Mar 3, 2019, 2:52 pm
#17
Join Date: Oct 2009
Location: PHL/EWR
Programs: AA, US, WN, HHonors Diamond, Hyatt Plat
Posts: 1,528
We used to fly to St. Augustine to visit our daughter, we now have an apartment in Flagler Beach (between St. Augustine and Daytona) which is equidistant to JAX and MCO. A few months ago I discovered my other daughter (who lives a mile away) and I were both headed to JAX on the same morning - but from different airports.
JAX is my preferred airport, I just wish I had more choices than three weekly flight times. That said from my experience TTN - JAX appears to be a popular flight, haven't flown PHL -JAX.
Mar 3, 2019, 3:05 pm
#18
Join Date: Sep 2015
Posts: 366
Assuming Spirit and Frontier attract virtually no high-yielding biz traffic (I think that's right -- the only real business travel they'd get is from small, poorer entrepreneurs spending their own money), I would think they have to fill their planes with leisure travelers (including friends and family travel). How many routes are there where there are enough leisure travellers to fill a A320? That's the rub from Frontier and Spirit. I always thought that Sprit's business model was based on tricking pax into thinking they were getting a cheapo fare, and then hit them with unexpected extras. They seem to have realized that business model has a limited shelf life, as they've transitioned to being a more responsible -- and reliable -- airline. I still think there are only so many routes where this works. My experience -- a few dozen flights now -- is that most upper middle class and above travellers will NOT fly budget airlines in the USA. And that, my guess, is where the money is in air travel. So not only does Spirit and Frontier have to attract bunches of leisure travellers, they have to attract lower income travellers willing to fly their very basic service. I simply do not believe that, over time, the Spirits and Frontiers of the world can keep their costs low enough to offer cheap enough fares so that their customers will tolerate the sucky service. This is especially true when the majors fight back with Basic Economy fares -- especially those that provide a free carry-on. But we'll have to see. There are many investors on Wall St. who disagree with me.
I also have more doubts about Basic Economy. When American offers BE on a route like PHL-MCO, it basically means everyone in the family, assuming all buy BE tickets, winds up sitting apart, right? Buy on Frontier or Spirit, one can buy a low fare for all tickets in family, and select seats together. AA offer BE on PHL-DFW (more a visit friends/family route) at various times, but Spirit has persisted. My guess is the availability isn't all that extensive and the route is large enough for Spirit to exist with a single flight. One way Spirit does it better than Frontier, is that it offers more connections in addition to the single nonstop flight. With Frontier, that fallback doesn't seem prevalent.
Last edited by beyondhere; Mar 3, 2019 at 3:13 pm
Mar 3, 2019, 6:32 pm
#19
Join Date: May 2011
Location: AUS
Programs: DL GM, F9 50K, NK Gold...AS MVP 50K soon?
Posts: 213
AA and DL seem to offer BE fares pretty widely at this point, even on routes where they don't compete with F9/NK/G4. My guess is part of the reason is adding BE allows them to do a stealthy fare hike of ~$25-30 OW on those routes for people who care about picking their seat ahead of time, while at the same time being able to price against the ULCCs (or ~$30 more each way) to avoid passenger leakage. That said, legacies fill their fare buckets at a different rate than ULCCs do, so even after enough add-ons to make the ULCC a decent experience they may be the best option. That happened on the last flight I took (comparing with Southwest...the flight wasn't cheap at $125 OW, but that included a bag and Stretch, and the WN flight was over $200).
Mar 3, 2019, 9:58 pm
#20
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Atlanta, GA, USA
Programs: Frontier Gold, DL estranged 1MMer, Spirit VIP, CO/NW/UA/AA once gold/plat/comped gold now dust.
Posts: 38,225
It definitely seems like the legacies are trying to imitate the ULCCs in BE and in generally downgrading the passenger experience. Heck, they might also give you a jungle jet rather than a cramped A320, depending on route. And award miles on revenue (minus taxes) rather than distance, so the cherry on the sundae will be fewer RDMs. Whee!
A big part of the market opportunity for ULCCs in recent years has been provided by "capacity discipline" on legacies and the cartel-like efforts to push up fares by limiting supply. In terms of trying to be aggressive against ULCCs, I think AA is #1 , UA is #2 and DL is a distant third. Back when ValuJet started up in ATL in the early 90s Delta initially matched them dollar for dollar, and later was only around $10 higher per direction. DL has NOT been matching Frontier, though. It'll match or be very close to Southwest most of the time, but not Spirit or Frontier. It's notable as well that a lot of F9's lowest fares come via percentage-off discount codes (SAVE70, etc.) on the F9 website and are thus hidden from the comparison sites.
A big part of the market opportunity for ULCCs in recent years has been provided by "capacity discipline" on legacies and the cartel-like efforts to push up fares by limiting supply. In terms of trying to be aggressive against ULCCs, I think AA is #1 , UA is #2 and DL is a distant third. Back when ValuJet started up in ATL in the early 90s Delta initially matched them dollar for dollar, and later was only around $10 higher per direction. DL has NOT been matching Frontier, though. It'll match or be very close to Southwest most of the time, but not Spirit or Frontier. It's notable as well that a lot of F9's lowest fares come via percentage-off discount codes (SAVE70, etc.) on the F9 website and are thus hidden from the comparison sites.
Mar 4, 2019, 7:17 am
#21
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Original Poster
Join Date: Mar 2000
Posts: 17,439
It definitely seems like the legacies are trying to imitate the ULCCs in BE and in generally downgrading the passenger experience. Heck, they might also give you a jungle jet rather than a cramped A320, depending on route. And award miles on revenue (minus taxes) rather than distance, so the cherry on the sundae will be fewer RDMs. Whee!
A big part of the market opportunity for ULCCs in recent years has been provided by "capacity discipline" on legacies and the cartel-like efforts to push up fares by limiting supply. In terms of trying to be aggressive against ULCCs, I think AA is #1 , UA is #2 and DL is a distant third. Back when ValuJet started up in ATL in the early 90s Delta initially matched them dollar for dollar, and later was only around $10 higher per direction. DL has NOT been matching Frontier, though. It'll match or be very close to Southwest most of the time, but not Spirit or Frontier. It's notable as well that a lot of F9's lowest fares come via percentage-off discount codes (SAVE70, etc.) on the F9 website and are thus hidden from the comparison sites.
A big part of the market opportunity for ULCCs in recent years has been provided by "capacity discipline" on legacies and the cartel-like efforts to push up fares by limiting supply. In terms of trying to be aggressive against ULCCs, I think AA is #1 , UA is #2 and DL is a distant third. Back when ValuJet started up in ATL in the early 90s Delta initially matched them dollar for dollar, and later was only around $10 higher per direction. DL has NOT been matching Frontier, though. It'll match or be very close to Southwest most of the time, but not Spirit or Frontier. It's notable as well that a lot of F9's lowest fares come via percentage-off discount codes (SAVE70, etc.) on the F9 website and are thus hidden from the comparison sites.
I have the most insight into how AA matches Spirit and Frontier these days. They occasionally match them dollar for dollar when the flights go "head to head" at about the same time, but more often they price a little higher, and seemingly only on flights that they otherwise are unlikely to sell out. Sometimes if Spirit loads a $40 fare to Florida, AA will do nothing, and just let Spirit sell it's few seats at that level and then compete more aggressively at a higher bucket level. Commonly, on any given route, about half the Spirit/Frontier flight times have a "competitive" fare from AA, and the other half AA doesn't bother matching at all. So if you want to fly AA at a cheap price on a route flown by Spirit/Frontier, you have to be even more flexible with your day of departure/flight time. Personally, if AA is within, say, $40 of the Frontier/Spirit fare, I fly AA. If they're not, and I don't have flexibility to change my flight times, I'll fly Spirit/Frontier (as long as I absolutely, positively don't need to be there at that time).
Mar 5, 2019, 1:40 am
#22
Join Date: May 2011
Location: AUS
Programs: DL GM, F9 50K, NK Gold...AS MVP 50K soon?
Posts: 213
My guess is DL feels that they can fill their planes without dipping into the super-low fare buckets. The fact that their BE includes a carry-on means that they price $35 more value per segment than the F9 or NK do, so if they price $35 per segment higher they'll do just fine. And realistically DL doesn't fly anything with less than 30-inch seat pitch so they can go another up another ten bucks on that as well...and still fill planes, while ULCCs stimulate traffic that wouldn't have been there.
By contrast, UA and AA aren't as differentiated from ULCCs product wise so they can't command that kind of premium. Particularly UA, with the no-carryon policy, though from what I've seen they try anyway (and as a result I've found no occasion to fly them recently).
By contrast, UA and AA aren't as differentiated from ULCCs product wise so they can't command that kind of premium. Particularly UA, with the no-carryon policy, though from what I've seen they try anyway (and as a result I've found no occasion to fly them recently).
Mar 5, 2019, 10:36 am
#23
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Original Poster
Join Date: Mar 2000
Posts: 17,439
My guess is DL feels that they can fill their planes without dipping into the super-low fare buckets. The fact that their BE includes a carry-on means that they price $35 more value per segment than the F9 or NK do, so if they price $35 per segment higher they'll do just fine. And realistically DL doesn't fly anything with less than 30-inch seat pitch so they can go another up another ten bucks on that as well...and still fill planes, while ULCCs stimulate traffic that wouldn't have been there.
By contrast, UA and AA aren't as differentiated from ULCCs product wise so they can't command that kind of premium. Particularly UA, with the no-carryon policy, though from what I've seen they try anyway (and as a result I've found no occasion to fly them recently).
By contrast, UA and AA aren't as differentiated from ULCCs product wise so they can't command that kind of premium. Particularly UA, with the no-carryon policy, though from what I've seen they try anyway (and as a result I've found no occasion to fly them recently).
Mar 5, 2019, 9:56 pm
#24
Join Date: Sep 2015
Posts: 366
Yeah, there's no reason any rational person would fly an ULCC if the savings was only, say, $20 each way. These days, AA gives Basic Economy pax a free carry-on, too. You'd have to be an ultra-frugalista to be willing to pay nothing to fly a major carrier, where the comfort and service will almost certainly be at least a little better. Obviously, there are some very inexperienced travellers who don't know this, but I wouldn't think the majors airlines would mind losing these people.
If I look at PHL-MCO flights on 3/25,
American has 7 nonstop flights
$131 for Basic Economy, $161 for Main Cabin for six flights. Last flight (less desirable time) is $87 for Basic Economy
Southwest has 3 nonstop flights
$131 WGA for first two flights, $87 for late flight (less desirable time, lands late)
Spirit is $53.30 for all three of its flights.
Frontier is $49 Standard, $44 Discount Den for all three of its flights.
I know it's one random picking of dates, but I picked a competitive route. It seems AA is pricing BE to Southwest's fares not the ULCCs. And, I usually see considerable differences in AA BE vs. ULCC pricing on that route, that AA's Basic Economy can't fend off the ULCCs on the route.
Mar 6, 2019, 9:12 pm
#26
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Original Poster
Join Date: Mar 2000
Posts: 17,439
Wouldn't there be very high likelihood that a Basic Economy fare on AA, which won't let allow seat selection until 48 hours, likely lead to person getting a middle seat? Also boarding will be Group 9 unless one has the AA credit card. So there is not necessarily better comfort with a Basic Economy fare and the fares usually are still a lot higher (from what I see typically).
If I look at PHL-MCO flights on 3/25,
American has 7 nonstop flights
$131 for Basic Economy, $161 for Main Cabin for six flights. Last flight (less desirable time) is $87 for Basic Economy
Southwest has 3 nonstop flights
$131 WGA for first two flights, $87 for late flight (less desirable time, lands late)
Spirit is $53.30 for all three of its flights.
Frontier is $49 Standard, $44 Discount Den for all three of its flights.
I know it's one random picking of dates, but I picked a competitive route. It seems AA is pricing BE to Southwest's fares not the ULCCs. And, I usually see considerable differences in AA BE vs. ULCC pricing on that route, that AA's Basic Economy can't fend off the ULCCs on the route.
If I look at PHL-MCO flights on 3/25,
American has 7 nonstop flights
$131 for Basic Economy, $161 for Main Cabin for six flights. Last flight (less desirable time) is $87 for Basic Economy
Southwest has 3 nonstop flights
$131 WGA for first two flights, $87 for late flight (less desirable time, lands late)
Spirit is $53.30 for all three of its flights.
Frontier is $49 Standard, $44 Discount Den for all three of its flights.
I know it's one random picking of dates, but I picked a competitive route. It seems AA is pricing BE to Southwest's fares not the ULCCs. And, I usually see considerable differences in AA BE vs. ULCC pricing on that route, that AA's Basic Economy can't fend off the ULCCs on the route.
Mar 6, 2019, 9:14 pm
#27
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Original Poster
Join Date: Mar 2000
Posts: 17,439
Really? Your life is so leisurely that you can come and go "whenever"? That's great, but that doesn't work for most folks. They have these things called "obligations." Work, school, family, activities, whatever. Sure, they have more flexibility than biz travellers, but it's usually not unlimited. Like you can get off work on Thursday and Friday. But Frontier has no Wednesday night or Thursday flight. So you fly somebody else, regardless of the fare difference. That's why non-daily service always has lower yields.
Mar 7, 2019, 1:07 pm
#28
formerly jackvogt
Join Date: Dec 2015
Location: Atlanta, GA
Programs: Delta SkyMiles,
Posts: 822
Really? Your life is so leisurely that you can come and go "whenever"? That's great, but that doesn't work for most folks. They have these things called "obligations." Work, school, family, activities, whatever. Sure, they have more flexibility than biz travellers, but it's usually not unlimited. Like you can get off work on Thursday and Friday. But Frontier has no Wednesday night or Thursday flight. So you fly somebody else, regardless of the fare difference. That's why non-daily service always has lower yields.
Mar 17, 2019, 6:33 pm
#29
Join Date: Jul 2014
Posts: 491
I'm not saying that I have flexibility to go whenever I want. I live in Atlanta so every route (pretty much) has more than one frequency. Frontier does not have the fleet so be able to do that. They typically choose times that MOST vacationers would want to leave. They know that if you need frequency, you can go to another airline very easily. Either way, they try it and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. TYPICALLY, a business heavy route is not high capacity but rather high frequency. Maybe I just don't understand the point of your post. Just venting? Or trying to understand why Frontier has "erratic" schedules. I guarantee they have people who are smarter than either of us who plan these things.
Mar 18, 2019, 4:26 pm
#30
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Original Poster
Join Date: Mar 2000
Posts: 17,439
It's not a "rant." It's a Captain Obvious statement. If you don't fly a route every day, and your competitors do, you're going to have significantly lower yields. Travellers will pick an airline that flies when they want to fly. I don't think that's a debatable point in the real world.