St Augustine, Florida
 

Normally don't fly Frontier but saw today that they are starting service into St Augustine, Florida. My wife used to live up there. Nice, quaint town that attracts a lot of tourist. Airport isn't too far downtown SA or just a short drive to south jacksonville. $44 o/w is a steal!

From the route map it's only available from TTN. And only 3x per week. M-W-F and same days on return.

I'd wouldn't be surprised if it isn't removed before they start service.

There are other routes out of TTN like that: 1x daily on MWF. I'd doubt it removes the service before starting it. If it doesn't perform, it's just becomes "seasonal."

Frontier sent an email out to pax that have used TTN, promoting this new service today as a new Florida city for $49. I'd bet majority have never heard of St.Augustine, FL.

I have friends that have rented a car in one city, done Orlando-Tampa-Miami in a week or 10 days in Florida, so I suppose originating in Northern Florida can be possible. It's a 2-5 hour drive from there down to western and So. Florida.

Jacksonville likely also isn't as hot as other parts of Florida in the peak summer months, as Frontier is launching this in the summer, which is typically when Southwest and Spirit downsize on Florida service from PHL and ACY.

I wonder how Frontier will promote this service from the JAX side though. Likely limited service to Trenton isn't going to do much to capture pax from there, but maybe it adds more destinations from that market and advertises in the Jacksonville area (via newspaper, TV, etc.)

Sorry, I have no idea where MWF is, and no route from TTN is 1 x daily yet. That doesn't happen until the spring, with RDU and MDW. Although TTN-MCO, which began as 2 x weekly fifteen months ago, will go to 8 x weekly for spring break, and again in the summer.

UST - St. Augustine - is neatly placed between Jacksonville and Daytona Beach and should pick up at least some traffic to/from both.

Although it is the first route announced under the new ownership, it continues the same pattern as at the other TTN routes - starting at less than daily, 2 or 3 x weekly - and hopefully building from there. It suggests that Indigo likes what it is seeing at TTN and has faith in the model.

The last airline to serve the airport was the failed and short lived Skybus, but its load factors for PSM-UST were excellent.

i think TTN-UST should do rather well.

He means that there are alot of cities that only happen
once a day on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (in this case).

Was history class that far away that they don't remember Ponce De Leon and the Fountain of Youth. Perhaps if it doesn't do well they can give people named Juan or John (Full name is Juan Ponce De Leon) a 20% discount :D

.......and St Augustine is also maybe an easy 20 minute drive to Ponte Vedra, which is home to the PGA and TPC Sawgrass. Wouldn't be surprised to see them try to use that as a part of their promotion. If they don't they are missing out. And for all old school railroad enthusiast, St Augustine is where Henry Flagler built up several hotels before his empire expanded south to Miami and the keys.

"What TTN makes, the world takes".
I am glad to know that St. Augustine will finally get scheduled airline service.

Oooops, my bad - brain fart. Apologies to rtalk25.

It may have been that many many years ago, hence the saying on the bridge. But these days its more like The world makes, Trenton takes. Trenton is very dependant on the state and federal goverment to keep it a float. TTN is the best thing to come out of Trenton in years. (probably because its not really in Trenton but a suburb, Ewing).

http://phillyskyline.com/misc/wallpa...8_trenton2.jpg

Ironically, this bridge is very represenative of the whole being dependant on others as it is one of a few bridges in the area that are FREE supported by tolls on bigger more widely used roads.

That F9 would eventually add Jacksonville (or thereabouts) is not entirely surprising, but I could think of the locations that likely would have been ahead of that in terms of attractiveness - MYR, PBI, even Nassau, Bahamas.

The other thing I am wondering about is if this means a new Indigo strategy away from primary airports - would they switch services, for example, from Fort Myers to Punta Gorda, from Orlando to Sanford, and from Tampa to Clearwater.

Also, down the road, is this an indication that they will go into places like GYY (and exit MDW) as well as BED or ISP (which may lose its WN service after 15 years).

GYY and exit MDW? Don't see Chicagoans F9 flyers flocking to Gary. Though Southwest has most of MDW. Delta and I think Porter still flies to Canada from MDW.

Does anyone know the numbers of Frontier pax out of MDW to DEN?

Anything can happen and while what you suggest if surely possible, I don't think it is very likely.

The guiding model for both TTN and ILG is that as tertiary airports the flights are to primary airports. TTN-UST surely changes that - a tertiary airport to a tertiary airport - and if they can pull it off it is a brilliant move.

But Frontier has tried other secondary/tertiary airports before and they haven't worked. COS didn't work as an alternate for DEN, LGB didn't work as an alternate for LAX, RFD didn't work as alternate for MDW/ORD and I would shiver at the idea of GYY as an alternate for anywhere.

SFB is an Allegiant stronghold and as such the choices are more limited - Allegiant may have started to change its own model and is now flying CVG-SFB making a potential CVG-MCO less attractive to Frontier.

Frontier once flew DEN-JAX (as a red-eye) and the loads were excellent. UST would give it some of that (plus some of nearby Daytona Beach with eight million visitors a year) and has the benefit, as Frontier has said, being a very cheap airport.

So if anything, I suspect that this route may be a way of testing the waters at UST, and if it works I suspect (only suspect) that the next move may be to test a primary airport to/from UST - RDU-UST or even, in season at least, DEN-UST?

Remember Skybus? They flew to St. Augustine back in late-2007 through Apr 2008.

Indeed they did, and with pretty good loads - average 73%, but 80% on CMH-UTS in season.

It wasn't St. Augustine that killed Skybus.

Three other airlines went Chapter 11 in 2008, as oil hit $147 a barrel.