Frontier growth plans
 

From the Denver Business Journal...expansion in the east?

http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver...8400%5E3422431

The two paragraphs below taken from the Business Journal article provide some good hints about where Frontier might be looking to next for expansion:

"While he wouldn’t say where Frontier is eyeing for its next expansion, he said that move is likely to be at a location that does not have a lot of direct flights to Denver by another low-cost airline already.

“The way we’re going to grow is we bring differentiation,” Shurz said. “If we fly to markets that no one else flies to, that brings differentiation in general.”

Some of Frontier's new routes in markets once dominated by Delta and United seem to be doing very well. Madison in particular has been gangbuster from the outset and is being up-gauged to an A318 this July. Green Bay has been seeing good loads as well.

It wouldn't be too shocking to see some new service/additions in places like Des Moines, Ft. Wayne, Madison, Omaha, Pittsburgh, Sun Valley, or even Duluth (sum of which are offering incentives). There might even be a few more international routes that could work from the hubs or key spoke cities.

It will be interesting to see what they have planned.

Might we see AirTran begin service to Madison and Green Bay?

If you play the broadcast interview with the DBJ reporter, he talks about increased presence at DCA and LGA, if the slots are available.

He also talks about the brand recognition of F9 as a LCC, even in markets they currently don't serve.

Frontier definately wants to add more flights to DCA and LGA but slots aren't available (at least at a decent price).

The DOT ruled Republic was not a limited incumbent carrier at LGA or DCA and therefore isn't eligible to purchase/bid on any slots that might become available if Delta/U.S. Airways go ahead with the slot swap. Republic has a large portfolio of slots at DCA and LGA that they purchased a few years back and now lease to U.S. Airways.

Unless circumstances change significantly, the best Frontier can hope for is securing another slot or two to beef-up the MKE, MCI, or DEN routes.

If AirTran makes adjustments to the SkyWest flying, I could certainly see something like MSN or GRR being added.

I guess it depends how much SkyWest wants to lose on all of their at-risk flying for AirTran in MKE.

Yes, I think so. FL could be done extremely performance very well. Let's find out for which the specific routes will be choose.

If anything. I can't see AirTran deploying a 717 in either market, as their fleet is already spread thin. No additional aircraft until next year.

Maybe if Lynx or Skywest will have to bring more CRJ or turboprop aircraft out of MKE or DEN.

With AirTran dictating the fares on the Skywest flights I'm not sure if Skywest is seeing any revenue from fares with the CRJ, lower fuel prices help though but it can't be all that great. I can see AirTran subsidising some of the routes if they are not preforming to Skywest's desires, even if it is "at-risk" for Skywest.

The flights have lasted longer than I thought they would especially with some of the loads they are getting.

Has Skywest added any flights since they started flying for Airtran?

They are serving the same six routes originally announced.

MKE-CAK and MKE-DSM have been cut from 3x to 2x.

With the slack capacity they are adding a 4th MKE-STL flight next week, and the new schedule has the STL flights running at off-bank times so there aren't a lot of good connections...but this may well work because this the CRJ route which has generated a lot of local traffic for them. AirTran has been in it longer (first as 717) and since American pulled out a few months ago, the only competition has been two daily 37-seat ER3's on Midwest, which run largely full. This market has frustrated me a little bit about the RAH schedulers because the traffic is there for more service and the ER3's pretty much sell out on peak days.

Here's the new schedule with the adjusted FL times to start next week:

MKE-STL
6:00am FL
8:40am YX/F9
10:34am FL
1:20pm FL
4:15pm YX/F9
5:39pm FL

STL-MKE
7:41am FL
11:10am YX/F9
12:41pm FL
3:00pm FL
6:00pm YX/F9
7:10pm FL