Discontinuing CMH service :(
 

As someone who just became an Ascent member exclusively from flying between TTN and CMH, I'm very angry that they are discontinuing the service. I guess I should be happy I was able to take advantage of the cheap flights while I did... I guess it's back to United's $161 RT weekend fares out of EWR.

Never flew Frontier before and never will again. RIP...

So are you saying that you only fly one route so you will never have occasion to fly them again or are you saying that you are planning to punish them for dropping an obscure route by choosing not to fly them when you have a choice?

If TTN continues to grow, this may come back. However, I don't think it's surprising that this one was going to go by the boards once they introduced service to Cincinnati.

(Yes, I know, these days, Columbus is a much bigger city. But unlike CVG, CMH was never a hub.)

One other thing about CVG - the last couple of times I had business out there, my company made me fly to Dayton (I flew out of PHL) because the fare was $300 cheaper. Since I had to rent a car, and it is only about 75 minutes from DAY to downtown Cincy, I haven't actually flown into the Cincetucky airport in a long time.

It was never a fortress hub, but it has served as a hub in the past for both America West and Skybus.

Well since I am Ascent, I will consider Frontier if the opportunity were to arise. My comment was more that I don't see that opportunity arising.

I was surprised they never gave it TLC. 2x weekly is too little. It needed 4x weekly. While CVG and CLE have a good purpose for TTN, F9 should have given CMH an increase as well, rather than dump it for IND and BNA, which are going to be longer routes where they might run into some difficulties with higher costs and difficulty selling profitably.

Or perhaps it could have moved the flight to ILG. This would give ILG Ohio essentially via CMH, while TTN has it via CVG and CLE.

I suppose the Columbus based pax gets screwed, but the TTN-CMH route was intended more for the TTN based pax.

Are you NJ based or Columbus based? I expect many that are NJ based that flew TTN-CMH will still fly Frontier but to either CVG or CLE and rent a car to get to Columbus if necessary.

It was 3x weekly when it first started, and before they discontinued it they were selling 3x weekly again in March or April (just tapering it off to 2x weekly in the winter). In the many times I flew the route, it seemed to be completely full every time

However, in chatting with fellow pax and overhearing conversations, it seemed few of them were actually heading to/from Columbus. A lot of them talked about the long journey they still had after arriving at CMH to get to Cleveland or Cincinnati (or Dayton, Sandusky, etc).

I am just recently Columbus based, but I was previously NYC-based; I still go up frequently for work and also to see my old NJ/NY friends. It won't be worth it to me to go to CLE, especially since United still offers pretty regular cheap weekend fares, as well as <$100 one-ways on their Amtrak-codeshared CMH-EWR-ZFV (Philadelphia Amtrak) route -- I can just hop on the Amtrak segment, get my ticket scanned, and get off at Metropark.

At the end of the day, I was surprised that they even offered the TTN-CMH service in the first place. I suspect the Columbus airport authority gave them some kind of nice incentive to try it out. I know that my needs, which happened to align perfectly with the route, were probably a very unique case. At least I got to take advantage of it while it lasted.

I was surprised. It was the only one of the first non-Florida cities that I didn't understand.

Frontier struggled with CMH from the git-go, and shortly before it started it was selling so poorly they offered $15 one way fares in an effort to get butts on seats. It achieved this goal, but no-one is making money on that kind of fare. It did better in high summer, and with somewhat better fares, but that isn't enough to keep it year round.

So I was further surprised when they initially scheduled it through the winter, thinking perhaps they knew something I didn't, or were seeing numbers I wasn't, but in the end the cancellation came as no surprise to me.

Hope they can do $15 on CVG to TTN route, I check some of the flights offered in Feb, only seats are sold in a month, how can they make money??? the fare I want to buy already dropped from 139 to 99 to 69, shall I keep waiting??

CVG-TTN in February? It's unlikely to be full - some days maybe - it's a new route in mid-winter and and they have to get CVG folk used to the idea of using TTN. You could get lucky.

I don't know what specific date you're looking at, but I'm seeing $49 (one way), especially on Wednesdays.

Sales won't start picking up for another three or four weeks - it's still more than two months out and the big seller CVG-DEN is still (mostly) wide open for February.

Still, it's a new management in about ten days and sales tactics could change. :-)

I think the Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday schedule for a city is far more attractive than the Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule.

The latter doesn't permit a good weekend trip, esp. if Monday requires a day off of work, which is an atypical day to take off of work, or work from home, when meetings typically occur. College students also generally have class on Monday.

Also, the Wednesday flight is unlikely to be profitable and it will still sell for $49 the week or sometimes day before the flight.

In May and June, the TTN-CLE schedule becomes a M, W, Thu, F, although the service runs in the evening. Maybe pax will fly one way, and can drive back on Sunday.

United specials between EWR/PHL and CLE generally prohibit Sunday travel, and F9's low fare flights were attractive on that front.

TTN-CVG though switches to the better schedule in May and June from MWF to Su, Tu, Thu

Hopefully F9 gets another plane that it can dedicate for a Sunday TTN-CLE and CLE-TTN, along with other flights. Otherwise CLE might struggle.

:( This is so disappointing. I'm Columbus-based and was flying this route 1-2x/monthly due to a family situation in New Jersey. I was previously spending 400/flight to make these trips. I won't be able to drive to Cleveland or Cincinnati so I guess it's time to start saving up again! :( Thanks for posting this, I hadn't heard of it yet.

WN also sells CMH-MDW-PHL for $115 one-way. Ever since WN discontinued PHL-CMH nonstop, it has been generous on the CMH to PHL with a connection in MDW fares, and similarly with PIT service with a connection in MDW. This might have made it difficult for F9 via TTN as even though it was offering a nonstop, the connection choices via PHL from WN were relatively low fare and multiple frequency daily.

You could probably do CMH-BWI on WN, and then take Amtrak up also. It should be less than $400 all in as well.

But, WN is charging $102 WGA lowest getaway for CMH-BWI in January and February. I remember Southwest used to sell short-haul flights out of BWI for much less.