Would Frontier considering moving from MCO to SFB?
 

As Frontier has chosen airports like ILG, and others, where there is no Southwest, JetBlue or Spirit, and mid size markets like GSO and MDT, would there be benefit to move the Orlando focus from MCO to SFB?

SFB would be attractive to reach Volusia County/Deltona–Daytona Beach–Ormond Beach, FL MSA and areas in eastern central Florida. It'd serve a niche in a way, while still servicing Orlando, somewhat similar to this Princeton/Trenton idea.

I see that it still within one hour of a drive from SFB to Walt Disney World, so it'd still be Orlando service but just with a twist. A deal breaker or risk would be if rental car costs are higher at SFB than at MCO.

Where there is ample MCO service from one of the bigger carriers, but no SFB service, Frontier might be able to run a route at a more attractive pricing fare than the other carrier and given that SFB is a different enough airport, the competing carrier might not bother matching the fare.

In addition to routes like TTN/ILG-MCO and some to all of the other MCO routes switching to SFB, I was thinking it might give it possibility to launch
MDW-SFB,
DTW-SFB,
CLE-SFB,
CVG-SFB,
IAD-SFB
ACY-SFB
JFK-SFB or one NYC area airport if possible
where if Frontier launched MCO service from those cities, it would competing against one or more carriers offering nothing unique and likely be disadvantaged.

Allegiant seems to have made SFB work and pax seem fine landing there; otherwise Allegiant wouldn't be running these.

Are the costs lower at SFB over MCO? Is the local population around SFB to Daytona worthwhile to capture to operate a presence from SFB to primarily cold city but some major Northeast to Midwest airports? Thoughts?

It's an interesting question. Never say never, but I think it is unlikely. TTN-Florida seems to be working so well because they are flying to primary airports, and Frontier is taking much the same tack with ILG.

Switching to a Florida alternate - MKE-PIE instead of MKE-TPA - didn't work for Frontier, although that might have had more to do with what was happening at MKE, and when Allegiant tried switching some flights from SFB to MCO, that didn't work, either.

I guess the first question is, how much more Florida can TTN support? Is there a market TTN-PBI or TTN-DAB, or, as someone else suggested, TTN-SRQ? If SFB does serve a somewhat different catchment area, does it make sense to fly a couple of TTN-SFB as well as TTN-MCO?

Or - JAX? When Frontier flew DEN-JAX loads were terrific, but does that transfer to TTN? Could TTN support MIA, or is MIA covered by FLL?

Or would any of those simply cannibalise the present routes?

Then comes the question - will ILG just replicate TTN, or is it a unique market? Would ILG-MIA be better than ILG-FLL?

I don't know the answers to any of these questions, but I think they're fun to consider.

Allegiant also tends to fly from smaller markets with a less than daily schedule. Obviously families from smaller cities consider the trade-off being closer to home rather than further from Disney.

Cruises are another matter... fly in the day prior and take the hotel shuttle back to MCO for pickup and transport to Port Canaveral.

I guess what I'm trying to also assess is if this area would be attractive for an airline to capture as an origin market/Orlando niche also.

Anyone here know about the area demographics local to SFB, NE Orlando MSA to DAB?

The TPA to PIE geographic difference is small, but the MCO to SFB distance is a good 32 miles or so. Basically, if that side of the region up to Daytona is a poor area, than it probably wouldn't be worthwhile for Frontier move it's successful MCO operations elsewhere, but if there were middle income to wealthy enclaves, like the Princeton region and areas around it, than it might work in favor of considering services at SFB.

Interesting topic as an MCO resident who works a few miles from SFB. I would prefer to have alternative choices for domestic flights out of SFB, however, I think the business travelers that F9 has prefer the MCO location because of the ground transport options that SFB lacks. There are rental cars, but not much else, and a taxi from SFB to anywhere around the Convention Center would be brutal and outpace the cost of the flight to MCO. I'm not exactly sure how Allegiant makes things work at SFB and why they failed at MCO. I wonder if it was a matter of cost per flight per gate, rather than a lack of sales. I'm quite curious about that case study. I avoid Allegiant like the plague now because I can't stand the MD planes, but would consider F9, especially if they brought back the service to MSN.