Republic Airways Update
 

Republic Airways presented today at the Rodman & Renshaw 2011 Airline Conference. The slides from the presentation can be found here:
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External...F8VHlwZT0z&t=1

There are details for both the fixed-fee and branded businesses.

On the branded side, this is the first confirmation I've seen that Frontier will not have any sub 99 seat aircraft in the fleet by December 2012. For MKE, this likely means most (if not all) of the remaining regional jet routes will be eliminated. There really aren't any routes that can support E190 or larger without feed.

It looks like MKE could very well be a 20-25 flight operation for Frontier by this time next year.

Interesting that the cover page features one of their biggest competitors in DEN.

LOL...you would think that they might have chosen to feature a Frontier aircraft on the cover and use a smaller photo to display an aircraft from the fixed-fee business. The word "Express" on the fuselage is certainly not as noticeable as "United."

Could this be intentional. as they are trying to downplay the Frontier side of RJET?

The fleet plan recently filed and posted on Republic's website still says 3 50-seat RJ's and 2 74-76 seat aircraft (Q400 or E170) flying in the Frontier fleet for Q4 of 2012.

http://www.rjet.com/investorrelations.html

[from this link, click on "Financial Reports" at left, then on "Fleet Plan / Block Hour Report"]

This document says Updated November 7th. Now since November 7th have they changed their plans and gotten that change into the slide show created for this presentation? Possible, but it seems a little tight that such a decision would happen to be made in that narrow window, and then the presentation which was probably already well in the works would be modified to reflect that change. The presentation wasn't just conceived, complied, and created in a few hours.

So there are a few possibilities that come to mind.

(a) it is possible that the slide show presentation reflects a decision since 11/7 to fully eliminate the sub-99 seat aircraft

(b) it is possible that one or the other is simply incorrect...one hand doing one thing while the other is donig something else

(c) it is possible that they will keep them through 2012 as shown on the fleet plan, but plan to dispose of them at 2012 year end

(d) it is possible that the small number of remaining ERJ and Q400 could be reclassified back into the fixed-fee numbers -- still flying as Frontier but not dragging down the all-important overall CASM.

You know, Republic is (of course) grooming Frontier for sale. And in that presentation it says that the type of sale (including if it is part sale or full sale) is not yet determined. But two things seem pretty clear in relation to the small aircraft flying as F9*

(1) They are pushing Frontier as having ultra-low-cost-carrier costs, and they need to be rid of all 99-seat aircraft to have that golden CASM number to brag about

(2) Anyone who is interested in actually purchasing Frontier and splitting it away from Republic certainly has no interest in an orhpan fleet of 3 ERJ and 2 Q400.

In both those points, the few small aircraft are boat anchors to the "Frontier" they want to find a buyer for. The more I think about it, the less I'm convinced that the presentation is really tipping their hand that the ERJ and Q400 will be parked by year end. I think that they are shining Frontier up for sale with this investor presentation. Even if there are plans to keep a few sub-99 aircraft (which may or may not be) they are not gonig to burden the for-sale Frontier with them.

If/when the last ERJ go, it seems that at best Newark could survive with E190, and possibly Omaha if they coordinate for connections to what's left at MKE.

Don't forget there are a couple possible connections out of Omaha. The one that is really reasonable would be to LAX when that flight resumes this spring.

The Q400s have found a home.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix....715&highlight=

Thank god now maybe they will come to their senses and dump F9 entirely... Let it fold, sell it scrap it whatever its such a huge drain on a very profitable company....

From the standpoint of equipment Jet Blue runs Airbii and the 190s.