More ILG?
 

I've been hearing rumours of this for about a week:

https://www.facebook.com/FlyWilmILG

"Frontier Airlines is expected to announce plans for the airline’s further growth at Wilmington Airport, expanding on it successful launch of nonstop service to Chicago, Denver, Orlando and Tampa that began earlier this year."

Dickie birds say the annoucement may be tomorrow or Thursday.

Probably gonna be FLL, hope they add BOS, CMH, LAS, MYR? Maybe renewed IAH seasonal service?

BOS might not be likely because JetBlue already competes with US Airways out of PHL which not too far up on I-95 from ILG, and the fares are reasonable.

FLL seems most plausible. While Southwest competes with US out of PHL, I think it's a market that can be stimulated even more because of vacation traffic. Plus, ILG is superior with the parking and close gate access. NK flies 3x daily on ACY-FLL so cumulatively I don't know why F9 is deficient from TTN and ILG to FLL. Maybe So. Florida residents are going to Revel casino, or people are connecting to Latin America from ACY, but I suspect the far majority are NJ/PA pax flying to So. Florida O&D.


IAH is more a business market with VFR but not really a leisure market. I've never heard anybody vacationing in Houston, although it's more mild this time of year.

ATL might be a possibility. I haven't tracked Southwest/AirTran's PHL-ATL fares lately. Sometimes it's high, other times it looks reasonable for the distance. ATL is a large market and not as far or "thin" as flight service to IAH or say DFW.

I'm surprised ILG-MDW lasts. It would be more sense to just beef up TTN-MDW rather than splitting MDW services but maybe Baltimoreaons are driving up to ILG to get a low fare (I doubt it). The old Rapid Rewards 1.0 on Southwest made it very easy to get a flight from BWI to MDW. Now, it's this RR2.0 where if one books within 2 weeks, one could be looking at 30,000 reward points for a one-way, or 60,000 reward points for a round-trip.

Southwest has increased fares/points on certain routes like this that maybe ILG-MDW if the timing works out (doubtful for most situations), it can be an alternative out there for pax from Baltimore.

Frontier's website does list ILG as an alternative to Baltimore. However, the highway tolls are steep so I really can't think as ILG for Baltimore, just because Frontier's website associates the two. If anything, I'm surprised it's not associating DCA for Baltimore, which is a lot closer than ILG to Baltimore.

The Florida flights rom ILG have done very well and I'm surprised they haven't started ILG-FLL before.

I'd like to see them do something"exotic" such as ILG-SJU (Puerto Rico) or STT (St. Thomas) but I doubt they'd do that without Apple Vacations and I doubt that Apple could be persuaded away from PHL.

I've wondered about ILG-LAS, but that would be stiff competition with three airlines at PHL. Be fun to see, though. :-)

Yeah the competition is too much especially with NK flying PHL-LAS.
I'd like to see something along those lines though, something that they can't operate out of TTN.

If you are going to consider SJU, then maybe consider Nassau in the Bahamas (NAS?), which would likely be more popular,is a shorter flight, and has US Customs pre-clearance at the airport.

And ILG could then call itself Wilmington International Airport.

I guess I've always thought of NAS as a TTN route - it is the only Caribbean destination within range of the A319 from TTN because of the short runway.

But - who knows? One of the things I haven't worked out is the balance that they eventually see between ILG and TTN and hopefully we'll get some clues on that tomorrow.

People have mentioned Las Vegas. Can a full A320 make LAS from ILG's 7200' runway?

Also, what about the possibility that they will announce not new destinations, but expanded service to existing ones?

Detroit is one - fares starting at $35

Service between Wilmington/Philadelphia area, DE (ILG) and Detroit, MI (DTW) begins April 29, 2014.

Also Atlanta, same start date.

Each one is 3x weekly, Tu/Th/Su:

http://www.4-traders.com/REPUBLIC-AI...lade-17436120/

While this likely means TTN-ATL/DTW have been doing well, I'm surprised they aren't attempting routes that are too far to fly out of TTN.

In a nutshell - LOL.

I'm guessing these two shorter routes have to do with aircraft scheduling and I'm sure it's good for the airline, but it's a bit underwhelming given the hoopla - LOL.

I think the most interesting thing about the announcement was the broad hint that if the Indigo deal closes, then there might be more service for ILG:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...ba8_story.html

"But Siegel said a sale to Indigo would result in a well-capitalized company that could expand even faster."

Crankyflier has an interesting interview with a Frontier executive. The first part was published today:

http://crankyflier.com/

What is clear from that interview is that even though Frontier is experimenting in Wilmington and Trenton, they are not actually making money at those airports. They are TRYING to make money. So do not confuse expansion with "great commercial success."

I again think that operating a handful of flights out of an obscure airport is not the recipe for financial success. The RASM you're going to get from such an operation is going to be too low; you need higher frequencies to get higher RASM.

We'll see.

Time was when we gave any new route a couple of years to turn a profit - I guess those days are gone.

Still, it seems unrealistically impatient to expect profitability in such a short space of time and on a bunch of routes. TTN has been operational for less than a year and ILG for less than six months and if there is confusion it isn't mine.

I don't think Frontier has ever claimed profitability for either TTN or ILG, but, as in this linked interview, TTN at least has exceeded the goals that were set for it:

http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2...r_airport.html

"We’ve marketed this airline and the airport,” Shurz said. “We’re getting more people to try the airport,” Shurz said.

In addition, it has been more difficult to measure success through the first year because Frontier is not as accustomed to setting up in an airport that does not already have commercial flights, he said. The company has, however, exceeded the goals that it set for the area."

I don't know if any of the routes are operating profitably (MCO?), but even if some are, there is still a not inconsiderable capital expenditure to consider.

Most (all?) of my interest in this is in the potential future not in the now, because if TTN/ILG (either/or) work, it solves some critical problems that have bedevilled DEN-centric Frontier throughout its history, especially 1Q - winter.

All the skiers and the limited amounts of snow-bird flying that can be done from DEN have never been enough to make the airline profitable in winter, even before Southwest at DEN.

It also solves the other issue that has beset Frontier for as long as I have been aware of the airline - where else, beyond DEN?

The few attempts to do this have failed and have been marked by almost immediate reduction of service. In that sense, at least, both TTN and ILG are already different.

One additional problem with maintaining a small presence at a small airport is getting the word out that you even exist. Sure, Frontier did an initial advertising campaign in Wilmington and Trenton to launch their service, but the small operation cannot sustain a large, continued ad campaign. So people forget you're there, and future travelers often don't even realize it.

As an example, I recently had a Delaware friend complain to me about how she was facing a high ticket cost for a PHL to MKE flight at the time she wanted to take to southeast Wisconsin. It didn't even immediately occur to me that perhaps ILG-MDW might be a reasonable alternative for her. If I can't remember that, what are the odds that a "regular" traveler would (like my Delaware friend has no clue that Frontier was operating out of Wilmington). And most flight searches that "normal" people would do wouldn't pull up this option.

I thought that both I, and more importantly Frontier, had already said this - that they have to sell the airport as well as the routes, because the airports were completely unknown quantities:

"We’ve marketed this airline and the airport,” Shurz said. “We’re getting more people to try the airport,” Shurz said."

I've never seen numbers for ILG, but it is tough to argue with (system average) 90% plus load factors at TTN. I note that TTN-MSY was suspended in spite of (average) 87% load factors.

I do understand that this says nothing about yields - only airport awareness.

I can't speak for your Delaware friend but as a resident of New Castle County I can tell you that my colleagues and friends are very aware of Frontier's service out of New Castle County Airport. It's also been prominently featured in our (only) newspaper. The situation here is unique - we've been without service for a long time, ever since DL bailed, and Frontier's arrival is more than just another airline entering a market. Even my friends in Kent County are well aware of the service. I don't think the issue is lack of awareness of the ILG service, it's more an issue of the limited schedule.

Actually, F9 will start ILG-ATL/DTW.

http://news.flyfrontier.com/press-re...n-wilmington-0

This routes will becomes effective April 29, 2014.

Now, for the first time that I have seen, we have a number for ILG, although very generalised:

http://www.philly.com/philly/busines...80f038ecb.html

""The Houston market was a disappointment ... All the other markets are doing well," said Siegel, adding that Frontier is operating at about 90 percent capacity in Wilmington.

New Castle Airport director Stephen Williams said the facility has processed more than 70,000 passengers since Frontier began operating in July, roughly equally split between departures and arrivals."

Again, this says nothing about yield.

Here are the potential yields based on average fare and distance for each destination in Q2/2013. The actual RASM and CASM likely differ, but this is a starting point. These numbers were obtained from the DOT Domestic Airline Airfare report.

TTN-RDU = $0.23/mile
TTN-DTW = $0.20/mile
TTN-CMH = $0.19/mile
TTN-ORD = $0.15/mile
TTN-ATL = $0.14/mile
TTN-MCO = $0.13/mile
TTN-RSW = $0.12/mile
TTN-FLL = $0.11/mile
TTN-TPA = $0.11/mile
TTN-MSY = $0.10/mile...not shocked that this was the first route cut.

Given these numbers...the Florida service to FLL and TPA is likely hanging on by a thread. The addition of CVG to TTN is also not surprising seeing the strength of the shorter-haul routes.

Where are you seeing these numbers? The airfare report on the DOT website is only including MDW, FLL, and TPA from TTN.

I downloaded Table 6, and then in column C I selected TTN from the dropdown selection menu. ^

http://www.dot.gov/office-policy/avi...d-quarter-2013

The TTN route was the lowest yielding route of all the non-stop destinations out of MSY. The DL route to MEM had a yield of $0.93/mile, and was our highest yielding non-stop destination. It's obvious why we're keeping 2 flights per day even after the dehubbing there.

Thank you!

Using those airfare numbers above as well as the number of flights that quarter*, I estimate the following:

It's funny, DTW, CMH, and RDU have the lightest loads yet the 5 new cities added this year are all similar in nature. RASM for Detroit seem to be very high, so it has that going for it. Hopefully the 3rd quarter numbers will show some nice growth, as this was either the launch quarter or 2 months after the launch date for every route except MCO.

Edited to add: CASM in Q2 was 11.45 cents. While it is impossible to know how that translates to these routes (the average TTN stage length is 200 miles less than Frontier's systemwide average, but costs may be lower as these are not int'l flights and TTN is cheaper to fly into than DEN), 2 of the 10 were profitable in this regard, and another 2 were within about 3%. Not bad for so soon after launch. As mentioned, 3rd quarter will really shine a light on route finances.

*weekly flights x 13 for Florida & MSY, weekly flights x 12 for other cities that launched 2nd week of April. I assumed 4x weekly for MCO, launch number of weekly flights for all other cities.

I would think some routes will work in the long term - especially those in Florida and (to my surprise) RDU, while I think Columbus will soon go away, probably before Cincinnati service starts.

However, if you are getting 80%+ load factors, even with reduced fares, they should make some money. Don't forget all the luggages fees you have to throw in to the mix.

Besides, where else would Frontier get such a long term deal on landing fees?

I would think that RDU's profitability has improved since it went from 6 flights/week down to five, and MDW from six to four (although I understand booking for MDW post-reopening has been weak).

I think ILG might suffer this issue a little more than TTN. Atleast F9 has been advertising TTN more I think, and it has more routes, better frequency to markets like MDW, and it also has the Central/Northern NJ catchment. So there'll be more word of mouth.

Not that it's very significant but travelocity also associates TTN with Philadelphia. There is no ILG association to Philly on travelocity as well. travelocity sells Frontier flights.

The loads might be good at ILG, but the yields are probably terrible. There needs to be more mass awareness/interest to ramp up demand, while supply remains and F9 can charge more if it needs to make the flights more profitable. ILG-IAH was a disaster.

Remembering that the non-Florida flights didn't start until April 8, and there were introductory fares for all of them.

I think CMH is one of the most interesting because it took a long time to fill the planes and they dropped the intro fares to $15 each way for a while, but eventually it did well. It's tough to imagine that will be true in January/February, but it reverts to 3 x in the spring.

RDU has been a surprise to me as well, and it is going back to 6 x in the spring.

I'm hoping they'll give MSY another shot at it next year. The loads were very healthy, but they need to raise the fares a bit. I don't think a $10 increase in fares would scare off too many customers. A fare of $120 would put the yields closer to that of TPA.

What I don't understand is why Frontier doesn't pick, say, 2 destinations from ILG and fly it daily (OK, if they want to do 5x or 6x that might work).

It's just not practical to fly 3x a week. You're going to get horrific yields, because you're basically offering nothing except price at that point. People who would be inclined to be their customers go elsewhere because, for example, you can get them out on Friday.

Given how high fares are at PHL right now, Frontier would have a shot if they offered plausible service from ILG to a city that people want to travel to. I mean, look at what Spirit is doing: their service is horrible, but they get people on price (and then charge them for lots of incidentals).

If Frontier offered a reservation and in-flight service A LITTLE BETTER than Spirit, with reasonable frequencies, they might be able to build a business out of ILG. And one advantage of ILG is that US might leave them alone. For instance, in response to Spirit's PHL-DFW service, US is charging as little as $44 each way on that route. There's no way Spirit can make money if US is willing to do that.

Allegiant uses a similar model and is extremely profitable. The financial turnaround at Frontier since this model was instituted is one of the major reasons it was attractive to the new owner.

Whether Indigo will continue with this model is beyond my ken, but I find it difficult to believe that Indigo was unaware of the announcements at ILG and TTN and presumably gave them the nod, as CEO Siegel indicated.

I know US is matching Spirit's advance purchase fares. Even Southwest is caught in the mess and doing it on the one stops to DAL. But within the 2 week window pricing, it varies on the carriers, and I don't think US is charging low fares. I think this is where Spirit might be making money and capturing whoever is left. Like someone from Dallas who decides at the last minute to attend the family get together in Philly would otherwise not fly because it's too expensive could probably fly via Spirit for under $300 r/t now.

But since US is kinda breathing down Spirit's back at PHL, I've wondered is could Spirit move it's PHL flights down to ILG, and Frontier and Spirit co-exist side by side at ILG?

I agree on the impracticality of the 3x weekly. ILG-MDW was 3x weekly Monday Wed Friday in the morning. It was like a quasi business schedule flight with it leaving early on Monday, but the fares were always low when I checked for that Wednesday flight. F9 has since tweaked the schedule and I think it's only 2x weekly. Rather than split MDW between TTN and ILG, why not make it 7x weekly or 1x daily from TTN and get ILG going with some FLL. FLL is somewhat different as it targets a retired/vacation traffic flow where you can easily spend a week down in Florida, although the summer months might be challenging when it's too hot down there. ACY atleast has the Revel casino and a few hotel/attractions that maybe ppl from So. Florida come up to the Jersey shore in the summer. I'm just wondering how Spirit makes ACY-FLL work 3x daily but F9 can't even start 3x weekly at ILG.

As mentioned upthread, Allegiant is making plenty of money with less than daily frequencies. As the Cranky Flier interview pointed out, Frontier is looking to Europe for what ULCCs there do. Lots of them fly several times per week between cities rather than several times per day.

The other plus to less-than-daily service is staying under the radar of the majors. There are over 50 daily flights from PHL & EWR-Chicago, Frontier coming in offering less than daily service out of an alternate airport will keep them off the ire of the majors. No major will lower their fares to compete with flights that run 3-6x weekly out of an alternate because for every dollar it costs F9, it costs the competing airline 10-20 times that. If Frontier decided to run it daily or more, it could start to threaten the major airline's position, and could cause fare matching, or worse, someone else competing directly on the route.

I imagine Ryanair would disagree strongly with that, many of its routes are less than daily and some only 1 x weekly.

Multiple frequency is considered desirable for the business traveller, but Frontier, like Ryanair, isn't a business oriented airline - it is a leisure airline. The odd thing is that quite a lot of (small) business people fly Ryanair - they adjust their schedules to save money.

Tomorrow's flights from TTN are sold to 96% capacity but none of the routes are daily.

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?se...cal&id=9317573

"I think we are going to have customers come back to the airport in droves. They're selling tickets like hotcakes between now and Christmas," said Mercer County Executive Brian Hughes.

In fact, 96% of the seats on Friday's Frontier flights are booked.

I imagine some of that has to do with the hoopla of the reopening, but I doubt that applies at ATL, and the return flight ATL-TTN is also heavily booked.

Oddly, some of the first return flights from Florida are heavily booked, too, which raises the question - if they are returning pax, how did they get there? And if they are not returning pax, why do they want to go to TTN?

More ILG?
 

The FL flights are most likely VFR

I just realized, the two highest RASM markets in 2Q from Trenton (DTW and ATL) were the two new destinations out of ILG. Makes sense now.

I think Frontier is using TTN's success as a mould for ILG. MDW, MCO, TPA were all one of the first TTN cities. The one non TTN intro city(IAH) failed miserably. Now they are adding two of TTN's most successful cities. I'd expect RDU and FLL to come next and maybe by next fall, ILG will also get an upgrade.

Hopefully FLL will come by next winter season.

ILG has less frequency including less MDW which goes down to 2x but returns to 3x in Spring/Summer which makes sense as January/February isn't a great time to visit Chicago.

The PHL-DTW fares are high so I think it makes sense for ILG-DTW being added.

I think I was mistaken in thinking Atlanta is larger than Detroit significantly.

The CSAs are Atlanta CSA is 6 million and Detroit CSA is 5.3 million, but given that both airports are essentially gateways into the state, Georgia is 9.9 million and Michigan is close at 9.8 million. And DTW has the benefit in that it's shorter distance so less fuel/costs to fly TTN-DTW than TTN-ATL. NK for whatever reason never kept ACY-DTW year round.

It'd be interesting though if LAN was considered likely through TTN first. LAN has flights to DCA because of Sun Country, but no flight service to the New York City or Philly market. TTN could be a proxy. Also, Frontier already services LAN with Apple Vacations. It's also closer to Grand Rapids than DTW but I think the focus will be on DTW.

I wishes would they add service to MYR, CUN, LAS? Something different.

I noticed that the DEN-ILG return flights become red-eye in the summer (sometime in June-end of August) which is kind of cool, although the flights are slightly more expensive (which is understandable because of peak season).

One thing that I noticed is that Frontier isn't encouraging itineries past DEN from ILG.

I used dates of 5/28 to 6/2 (return) and checked other dates out just to check that those dates weren't anomolies. Round trip fares on Economy level exceed $800 to SFO-close to $900!, whereas the sum of ILG-DEN r/t and a DEN-SFO r/t if booked separately were just about $500 or so. A Southwest PHL-DEN-SFO was aligned around $300-500 r/t range. Similar that I found high ($800+) r/t fares on ILG-DEN-LAS and ILG-DEN-LAX and other west markets.

It's a very different strategy than Southwest that wants to encourage use of DEN, LAS and PHX (almost west coast hubs) for connections from PHL to the west coast, e.g. PHL-DEN-SFO, where Frontier wants pax O and D'ing on ILG-DEN and DEN-ILG. Maybe ILG is a test market for this type of approach in the Frontier network.

I priced LGA-DEN-SFO r/t on Frontier, and it was about $500 which seems more in line with Southwest. So, the ILG-DEN approach on O and D bookings isn't being applied to atleast LGA, where Frontier probably wants to fill the plane with some connecting pax past DEN.