Moving flights from IAH to HOU
 

Frontier to move to Houston’s Hobby Airport

Flights depart from Hobby beginning Nov. 18



Today we announced that we will move our Houston operations from George Bush Intercontinental Airport to William P. Hobby Airport (HOU) beginning on Nov. 18.



“Hobby Airport offers a great number of benefits to Frontier’s guests,” said Daniel Shurz, vice president of strategy and planning. “In addition to its newly refurbished terminal, Hobby offers easy access to downtown Houston and many popular tourist attractions in the area.”



Our operations at Hobby will begin on Nov. 18 with three daily nonstop flights to Denver:



Route Departs Arrives Frequency Aircraft

HOU-DEN 6:15 a.m. 7:41 a.m. Daily A319

HOU-DEN 3:49 p.m. 5:10 p.m. Daily A319 (E190 Saturday)

HOU-DEN 7:10 p.m. 8:35 p.m. Daily A319

DEN-HOU 11:47 a.m. 3:04 p.m. Daily A319 (E190 Saturday)

DEN-HOU 3:10 p.m. 6:29 p.m. Daily A319

DEN-HOU 7:10 p.m. 10:27 p.m. Daily A319

Customers who are booked on Frontier flights to Houston Intercontinental on or after Nov. 18 will automatically be rebooked on flights to Hobby.

From what I know this brings some cost benefits in terms of landing fees and whatnot. What are the other benefits to HOU over IAH for Frontier? Could they be looking at adding MCI-HOU or MKE-HOU and wanted to avoid competing "directly" with Continental?

HOU is closer to downtown and serves as an easier access point for the Galveston cruise traffic.

Besides costs, another factor behind the move may be the pending United/Continental merger. If the deal goes through, United will absolutely dominate DEN-IAH (a hub-to-hub route).

Midwest flew MKE-HOU for few months in 2005 with lackluster results. While the active hurricane season that year affected bookings to some degree, the route wasn't meeting internal expectations and Midwest wasn't in a position to try and nurse it to profitability.

If Frontier wants to add more routes from MKE, HOU is probably near the top of the list.

If my memory is accurate, Midwest announced MKE-HOU nonstop back in 2005, but had to quickly pull it after Hurricane Katrina hit.

I'm surprised that AirTran hasn't announced MKE-HOU yet. Along with DTW and PHL, it's one of the few business markets FL does not currently fly from MKE.

Perhaps, next year, when additional lift is added.

All the more reason for F9 to jump on the market first (well second).

So, what happens to the people who come to IAH on, say 11/16, park their car, fly out and return after 11/18? Will F9 be offering shuttle service? Ground Transportation Vouchers? This has to have been considered. Anyone have any idea?

Take that, Southwest....

Just out of curiosity, why do F9 paxs hate SW's expansions at DEN? Isn't competition good for us all?

Photo of "grand send-off"

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fb...5.103386926699

Should we start taking bets on when they try MKE-HOU with E90? Sure would beat the service on CO with E145 MKE-IAH.

You Tube Video
 

I flew into IAH on last Sunday and leave out of HOU tomorrow. It's a good thing it was on the local news or I would be sitting in IAH.

I asked Budget car rental if I could drop off at HOU instead of IAH, I happy they said yes. Maybe they need some cars moved.

Hate is a pretty strong word to use. While IMHO F9 offers a superior product to WN, the comment was an expression of amusement at airline competitive actions---HOU is, as you know, a WN hub.

It seems that it would have been prudent to contact people with itineraries that were into IAH and out of HOU and just give them a second reminder that they would be flying out of a different airport. I'm sure that somebody probably ended up at IAH expecting to catch their F9 flight yesterday and in the coming days - at least you caught it before ending up in that situation yourself.