Southwest's new schedule is out, and I found some interesting schedule changes:

IAD:
IAD-MDW at 2x daily (Frontier announced IAD-ORD)
IAD-DEN at 3x daily (typically Southwest has run it as 2x daily)
IAD-LAS added (Frontier announced this route as well). Both Southwest and Frontier might pressure UA out.
IAD-SAN added (Southwest is largest carrier in SAN)

PHL:
PHL-ATL drops down to 3x daily (maybe good for ILG-ATL and TTN-ATL)
PHL-FLL returns 2x daily
PHL-PBI returns 1x daily
PHL-MCO at 5x daily
PHL-TPA at 2x daily
PHL-RSW (missing in action)

PHL-ATL drops to 3x daily and is priced rather high, with connection feed in mind and maybe Southwest pricing high realizing US and Delta will just match whatever Southwest prices.

On Frontier's angle, it's good that TTN-ATL and ILG-ATL can be still attractive for low fares rather exclusively, just to/from ATL.

For Florida, Southwest has dedicated interest in keeping FLL in the winter time as well as PBI, however. Nonstop RSW is missing from Southwest's schedule from PHL.

I checked the CLE market, and couldn't see any noticeable changes.

I also noticed some lingering routes that it has like BWI-GSP at just 1x daily and in the evening, not timed for business traffic. If US starts price-matching Frontier on IAD-CLT, would Frontier consider GSP in lieu of CLT, and IAD-GSP? TTN-GSP? It'd get F9 into So. Carolina and maybe GSP which is a weak WN station.

What's most interesting about WN's PHL to Florida service is how expensive it's become. It may not seem that way to those who live in other parts of the country, but for many, many years it's been a God-given right to fly from the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic to Florida for cheap. How cheap? Well, there's almost always been fares under $100, and we've seen WN charge as little as $59 at times.

Now, the cheapest PHL fare to, say, FLL is $135. That's not a ridiculous price, but folks who fly these markets for leisure are used to bopping down for the weekend and such all the time. $270 roundtrip discourages you from taking a weekend trip. And if you're taking your kids down to see grandma, you're definitely not going for the weekend at this price.

WN's higher fares definitely give Frontier an opening for the ultra-low fare market. Of course, Spirit already does this a bit from BWI. But is this a profitable business? I wouldn't really think so, but if you can get enough baggage fees off the customers who think they're getting a deal, maybe you can make a go of it.

Frontier's Florida fares out of ILG are also very expensive when looking at the latest dates to open up (late September onwards). Nothing cheaper than $134 to either MCO or TPA (RSW is the exception). And the flights look very lightly booked. Hoping they bring these down as we get closer - fares are in the PHL neighborhood but 'unbundled'.

Frontier does lower the fares slightly closer to the date of travel. Perhaps 2-3 weeks can be the optimal time. Actually it happened to me that I overpaid by $15 as the fare went down three days after I had booked it. However, for Chicago, like TTN-MDW it rarely becomes cheaper closer to date of travel especially on Thursday, Friday and Sunday.

I also know it prices the far out (maybe 3 months out) schedules sometimes on the high side, maybe it gauges the demand, as it gives it flexibility to move flights around, delete flights, and not have too many pax it has to re-book or send cancellations out.

Then it sends out very short lasting promo codes when it needs an uptick in ticket sales.

The one Florida market that's interesting is PBI to me as Southwest doesn't fly MDW-PBI and it might be an opportunity for Frontier out in MDW. AA does offer ORD-PBI but I wonder if AA would bother matching Frontier. DTW-PBI is also exclusively Delta and high fares. Delta hasn't reacted to CLE-ATL by Frontier, so maybe DTW-PBI would be an opportunity for Frontier. These along with TTN, IAD and maybe CLE although it might dilute it's own sales for FLL from these markets.

MDW-Florida fares are much higher than Philly-Florida. Chicago and Detroit actually have it worse for a Florida getaway than from the Mid-Atlantic up to Boston for a Florida getaway. Maybe MKE and FNT are cheaper but the primary airports have less competition or somehow high fares even on Spirit which is lousy service.

Even PVD which is the same distance to Florida will have much lower fares than MDW/ORD to Florida.

PHL-MCO on Southwest is still very high frequency, along with on US. The demand to MCO must be strong year-round. The market should be large enough for ILG-MCO and TTN-MCO from Frontier, and Spirit's flights out in ACY. Frontier deleted ABE-MCO to fund TTN-MCO, but ABE-MCO was a route that didn't show weakness by AirTran as AirTran flew it right until Southwest bought it out and closed the entire station. I wonder if Frontier would have interest in re-instating this "suspended" route. Frontier competes against Allegiant in MDT, and Allegiant is the sole low cost carrier for ABE since Frontier left.

CLE-LAS is also gone from Southwest. It was seasonal the year before however. United's flight is priced super high.

Hope that's the case. Currently have a family trip to Florida scheduled for October on Southwest out of BWI - $109 fares each way. I'd love to switch to Frontier but fares need to drop a bunch before the 'unbundled' fare reaches the same value as the 'bundled' Southwest.

You never know, but $109 is now a good price from the Mid-Atlantic to Florida. Because of the (limited) competition from Spirit, Southwest seems to be keeping it's fares a little lower from BWI than, say, PHL.

Spirit, btw, now seems to only have really cheap fares on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

I agree. Those are pretty good fares. Frontier may dip to somewhere around the low 100s. It may go to 90 or below but that'd be a fare Frontier is making money on likely. For the pax, that's before seat selection and bag selection as well.

The Southwest BWI fares do rise though. ILG may start off high but dip low and settling somewhere significantly less than BWI around walk-up fare period.

Anyone know how Spirit is doing in PHL? While it doesn't do any Florida from PHL, it does DFW and LAS primarily, and US and Southwest is matching them (WN with one-stops to DAL) that I can't see the benefit of flying with Spirit given the better carriers. Southwest's new schedule of MDW-DAL and ATL-DAL opens up more DAL one-stops and connections as well.

The joy of very limited frequency?

Frontier seems to have built up a small but quite loyal following at ILG and, at 3 x weekly, doesn't have to fight to fill the aircraft.

I would wait a for a month or so, that seems to be an across the board fare increase for ILG fares after about September 20. In a month or so, prices will be lowered to be more competitive. You could wait for a promo code, they usually release those around a holiday. Also, consider the convenience of flying from a smaller airport.

I suspect very poorly, but I don't have any data. Everyone who's tried to challenge US at PHL lately has done poorly. And Spirit is practically set up to fail with limited schedules and a pretty fierce competitive response from US. It is unimaginable to me that they're not losing buckets of money on their PHL-DFW flight.

Not quite. Frontier left ABE because the airport wanted to (or was going to to) put costs up. Prior to that Frontier had intended to expand at ABE, at least with more Florida.

While I've always liked the idea of PBI for Frontier, I think UST may be the focus for the immediate future. The TTN-UST flights are gangbusters, and while I wonder if IAD-UST may be over scheduled by a frequency, I believe they're booking okay for so far out.

I would not fall over in shock to see more routes to UST at least by Spring Break.

Yes, costs were the reason cited, but Allegiant has worked there in ABE, and F9 has gone into other cost airports since then.

In the bigger picture, I wonder if TTN/ILG, CLE, IAD and the point to point MCO or future UST routes are side revenue, because of F9's dichotomous operation of having DEN very hub centric with connections but it's complete opposite over in the East. Most routes not daily and no connection or thru flights in the East. ULCC Spirit offers ACY-DTW-LAX and other connections although it doesn't hub at DTW. But Frontier is going more of an Allegiant approach in the East, but it's full hub out West.

Would DEN eventually become unbundled of it's hub and be made just one large focus city, with no connections offered into and out of it?

Frontier was working at ABE, too, but it came at a critical moment. During its entire history, Frontier has always had financial problems in Q1 - deep winter - no matter how well it performed the rest of the year.

When Dave Siegel became CEO he defined the problem. Frontier did not participate in the vast volumes of snowbird traffic, especially the Northeast/Florida, and so Frontier was actively looking for a way to do this. MCO might have been it - there was a point when they served fourteen destinations from MCO but the problem with some of those - MCO-COU, MCO-SHD - was the rest of the year.

ABE-MCO did extremely well and they intended to boost ABE, but two things happened at roughly the same time - ABE airport wanted to raise costs and TTN presented itself. The tight fleet demanded a choice.

It is also possible the CFO over-reacted to the (potential) increased costs at ABE. The CFO (he wasn't called that) was a high-flyer who saw himself as eventual CEO material and was throwing his weight around. In any event, he didn't get the job as actual CFO at Indigo's Frontier and left the airline, very abruptly and without warning, soon after Indigo took over.

I'm not sure that ABE could ever have become what TTN has - I think all Florida would have been good from there, but I''m not sure about non-Florida. Still and all, I hope they can find a way to restore ABE-MCO.

Anything's possible and I can't predict the future. Frontier has reduced connection opportunities at a lot of places - and IAD is not being developed as a connection hub - but I am told they want to improve the quality of connections at DEN.

DEN has always been an issue. It was Frontier's greatest strength, but also its most vulnerable weakness - all the eggs in one basket - and susceptible to attack, as happened with Southwest.

It's place in the great scheme of things is changing, but there are good routes from DEN - GTF, eg, or ANC and FAI, or North Dakota - which I doubt could survive without connections.

But because of it's size and geographic position, connections at DEN are fairly easy to schedule. Even the point-to-point oriented Southwest has ICO's - Intentional Connection Opportunities - at DEN.

Eventually, I suppose, the same thing could happen at CLE or IAD, or at least the opportunity for self-connects may present itself. It's a matter of scale - frequencies. At the moment, it is difficult even to self-connect - both ways - on most routes from the "out-hubs."

How did F9 perform on GSO-MCO? Any chance it'd be restored?

The GSO-MCO distance is closer to than the MDT-MCO or ABE-MCO distance. There maybe more driving than flying from North Carolina to Orlando which hurts air prospects, but RDU-MCO has 3x daily on Southwest and service from Delta. Allegiant still flies GSO-SFB.

Frontier could probably compete with Allegiant most easily since Allegiant flies to SFB and sells more like in inclusive vacation package that many might not want, atleast at ABE and maybe few other cities.

I wonder if Frontier will jump in on some MCO flying directly against Southwest or JetBlue. Maybe not at BWI against Southwest, or BOS against JetBlue, but an airport like SWF against JetBlue.

JetBlue has a token MCO flight service and token FLL flight. Would JetBlue even defend if Frontier operated an MCO flight also, and maybe Frontier added a TPA flight. I'd guess it'd also offer MDW, ATL and IAD and a few other cities. It would be interesting to see.

Against Southwest, I was thinking PIT. PIT might be a bigger undertaking than ABE, but it would be more rewarding if Frontier established themselves like it's doing in CLE, and it's capable for more ULCC competition, although Southwest operates 5x daily on PIT-MCO.