They also discontinued ATL-MSY on 1/4 but added a couple of other flights out of MSY.

Many markets have a net increase in nonstop destinations but fewer total flights per week than last year. Here are changes in domestic nonstops from July 2016 versus July 2015 at select airports:

Change in the number of nonstop domestic destinations:

+10 phl
+8 mco
+6 cle
+5 mke
+5 phx
+5 ord
+4 sfo
+3 bna
+3 mci
+3 rdu
+3 las
+2 sea
+2 ind
+2 dfw
+2 cvg
+2 aus
+1 stl
+1 msy
+1 atl
0 den
-2 ttn
-2 tpa
-3 msp
-8 iad

Change in number of weekly nonstop domestic departures:

+28 mco
+28 mke
+17 phl
+15 sfo
+12 phx
+11 bna
+10 mci
+10 sea
+10 stl
0 rdu
-2 cle
-2 ind
-4 dfw
-4 las
-9 cvg
-10 aus
-17 den
-19 ord
-21 ttn
-21 msp
-21 tpa
-32 atl
-42 iad

These domestic markets from 2015 don't appear to be in the summer 2016 schedule:

ATL ORD
AT LMCO
ATL PHL
FLL CVG
IAD ATL
IAD DTW
IAD CVG
IAD MEM
IADL AS
IAD MEM
MSP ATL
MSP IAD
MSP PHL
MSP TTN
MSY ATL
ORD IAD
PHX IAH
RSW DEN
UST TTN


Virtually all new nonstop city pairs being added this spring/summer are either 3x or 4x per week. That includes a number of seasonal markets restored from last summer which ran 7x/week in 2015.

The cities with the largest flight increases only see an add of 4x/day (28x/week) so we're not talking a lot of increase in any one place. A more typical story is something like Cleveland...six more nonstop destinations than last summer but net departures are flat (2x/fewer per week). Atlanta is fairly flat...new markets are nearly offset by discontinued ones with net nonstop markets increasing by one. But weekly departures are 32 fewer...4 or 5 fewer departures on an average day.

Given that the fleet is still very tight they are getting a lot of buzz on new markets. Once the fleet count starts expanding down the road a bit I wonder if they will backfill...operating more markets 7x/week and keeping more of them all year. Or will they go for market volume, adding more 3x-4x /week markets and doing heavy seasonal adjustments.

The regular OAG thread at Airliners.net shows F9 adding CMH and PIT in June, with DEN and LAS being the destinations for each.

Any word on that? It'd be interesting to see Frontier back at CMH for a third time.

Knope's work shows that Frontier dropped 32 weekly flights from ATL. F9 couldn't even sustain a less-than-daily ATL-MCO. DL is running 17 flights today ATL-MCO, the smallest aircraft being a 180-passenger 737-900. Sure, DL is carrying connecting passengers but there's plenty of O&D on that route.

Again, I know you know this but they're working this schedule with fewer aircraft than they had last year - until July. More than a dozen A319's are going away (end of lease) and the bulk of new and replacement aircraft don't arrive until May/June so the fleet doesn't get back up to par until then.

From July to the end of the year there will be a net gain of nine aircraft, which may be why we're already hearing rumours of new routes beyond these presently announced.

I imagine that some of the new MCO routes - presently at 3 or 4 x weekly - will go to daily come next winter, CLT-MCO say, but the bonus to the less-than-daily service is that it helps calm the presently ruffled feathers of the majors.

But Frontier's Biffle has publicly said:

http://www.startribune.com/frontier-...nal/364637891/

�Travelers between big cities have enjoyed low fares while many markets have remained overpriced and underserved,� said Frontier Airlines President Barry Biffle. �Frontier�s low fares in these new markets will benefit millions of new fliers who are forced to drive because they haven�t found affordable air travel options � or they simply stay at home. We see hundreds of additional opportunities like these throughout the country, fueling our growth for years to come.�

And I would imagine that a lot of the smaller cities will continue to have less-than-daily service, which was the basis of the turnaround in Frontier's financial fortunes.

I think F9 might be able to attain a base, if it got TSA PreCheck implemented. On the other thread, Allegiant recently got TSA PreCheck implemented, so atleast one US ULCC of the three has it now.

For a large airport like ATL where you have to be at the airport typically a good three hours before even just a domestic flight, I could see that short-hauls can become challenging when land transportation is doable. Carriers might need to rely heavily on connection traffic for those routes.

Southwest for example doesn't fly BNA-ATL or CLT-ATL, even though Southwest has TSA PreCheck. But in those cases, the distance is even shorter.

Edit to a previous post, Southwest is fare matching ATL-MCO albeit it's for flights atleast 2 weeks or so out. I got a $54 fare which is likely a fare match to NK's $34.10 fare. It's still a bloodbath that Frontier might not want to return nonetheless, although I think it could have an advantage over NK between the ULCCs, if it got TSA PreCheck implemented.

ATL might be still challenging because on almost every route, there is atleast 2+ carriers or more, and on a bloodbath route (i.e. to an AA hub), it can be worse.

Well, I hafta admit I based the assessment on destination selection, not number of flights. One might assume that if they find a good route with some demand then it'd be a candidate for adding capacity and flights eventually. The ATL-MCO loss is not surprising given DL, WN and NK being on that route. Others might be considered trial balloons, and I hope the likes of MEM, STL and MCI can be sustained even though you could make a case that they're all jinxed as far as operating profitably.

DL's non-matching of fares and non-rewarding FF program for low-rev pax creates space, of course, and WN isn't what it was as far as pushing fares down (if they were their old selves we'd likely see much less NK presence). You've also got connecting flights to some western markets that could be quite a bit lower on F8 vs. the legacies out of ATL.

Anything is possible, but I'd be surprised Frontier intends to fly those three routes through the winter.

Disappointed to see that DEN-MDT and MDT-MCO haven't returned. Maybe next year with more aircraft. Now that they're back to less than daily scheduling, and with virtually no nonstop competition, I'd think yields would be pretty good on both. Frontier has previously said both routes were profitable (DEN-MDT even saw an A320 on one frequency during the summer of 2014).

Add PHL-CMH and PHL-SAT, 3x weekly.

CMH also gets DEN and LAS daily (A319) and MCO 3x/week (A321). PHL is 3x/week on an A320.

They wasted no time in advertising it at the airport, either. The day of the announcement, a Frontier banner detailing the introductory fares and Frontier balloons were up at an empty ticket counter position.

This is Frontier's third go in Columbus, following MCI and MKE after the YX merger and a brief return to TTN before they jumped ship for CLE and CVG.

Glad RDU-TTN is coming back though 4x a week isn't what I was hoping for.

When???

FYI: Allegiant does exactly this, at often that pricepoint, but from Phoenix-Mesa instead of PHX-SkyHarbor.