Cattle Airlines

Or will they shut down in a few months? When larger airlines declare bankruptcy, they continue flying. When smaller ones do, they sometimes liquidate as in Midway Airlines, Pride Air, McClain, Air South, Independence Air, etc.

How's Frontier doing?

MikeFromMKE

Frontier went through bankruptcy 2-3 years ago. They are now owned by a parent which has a decent amount of guaranteed revenue which has helped keep them afloat as they completed a restructuring effort designed to restore F9 to profitability. They had their first solid quarter last quarter and things are looking promising for Q4. There are no certainties in this industry and anything could happen, but I wouldn't be worried about booking new flights on F9.

YXNet

As Mike said, Frontier is no wholly owned by Republic Airlines, which Republic was doing very well before they bought the two airlines. However, there is still an insurance that Frontier won't just shut down because the amount of money Republic has put into the airline.

If you are worried about a future flight, I would be more concerned about them cutting the route before worrying about them shutting down. That doesn't mean they won't ever shut down, but that's not in the future yet. At least in the short term.

knope2001

The odds of them shutting down in the next year or so are very slim. Not to imply that they are likely to shut down at all, but they are likely nowhere near that point.

Even if Frontier were to be cut loose from their parent company Republic (a profitable company) and file chapter 11 on their own, usually it takes a long time for an airline to die in the modern age. Midway filed for Chapter 11 in August of 2001 and flew for two more years before finally shutting down. Vanguard was a similar situation. Even Independence, which was a tunnel with no light at the end and burned through money at a stunning rate, lasted a couple of months after chapter 11 before shtudown.

Back a few decades to upstart examples like Pride Air, Air South, and McClain, those
were comparably tiny, fledgling airlines, often with relatively thin capitalization and not much of a safety net. Frontier is in a different situation than those airlines were back then.

Again, I don't see any reason to think that Frontier is destined for shutdown. But if things do deteriorate, the cold question of "will they shut down and strand me?" is still very likely no.

If you'd like, link over to this thread from several weeks back for more discussion of a similar question:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/front...e-trouble.html

Cattle Airlines

Flyertalk has some ads about Frontier's winter sale for travel before 3/7/2012. Seems like a transcontinental domestic flight can be had for $99 (actually $120 after all the fees). That is about $100 less than other airlines. I bought one for 2 months from now.

Thanks for the advice. I think F9 will be around in 2 months. It seems that I might not get useful miles for this. I have a F9 Early Returns account but I haven't flown on F9 for 6 years. I can't find any other airlines which credits Frontier flights.

DCflyerAA-YX

Frontier has no frequent flyer agreements with an other airlines beyond the Codeshare with Great Lakes into and out of Denver, but those need to have a F9 flight number.

valor155

I believe that Frotier went into bankruptcy because not that they were doing all that much worse than any other airline, or that they couldn't pay their bills, but rather, FirstData Corp who does their CC transactions started withholding 100% of the charged fare instead of maybe 35% max.

How can you possibly run any business without operating revenue (or an angel)? You can't, so declaring bankruptcy was the logical way out of FirstData Corp's vice grip.

It was a disaster for me as a F9 stockholder. I always liked and believed in this airline, and still like flying them. FDC's draconian policy cost me plenty.

Rant off. I hope Frontier continues to fly and is also profitable for many years to come.

RSVP

Frontier, most likely will continue to operate. However, it appears Republic is looking to shed it from under its umbrella.