Frontier's ever-changing route map
 

Has anyone else noticed that, if you look at Frontier's route map from your home airport and then, six months later, look again, it can be almost completely different? These guys seem to be entering and exiting markets like mad. Certainly an unconventional business plan for an airline. I guess they don't really expect anyone to be loyal or anything. I suppose they just think you're going to find their flight on a CRS and book it if it's cheaper, or be enticed to fly somewhere based on their latest 75% off fare.

I do notice.

It is pretty frustrating and hard to understand why they make the changes.

I was flying fairly regularly LAX-MCO but the route was discontinued. In its place I flew SAN-MCO a couple of times, even though it was a about a half hour longer drive to and from the airport, the price, elite perks and red eye schedule made it worth it.

They discontinued SAN-MCO to so there is currently no way to fly from Southern California to MCO that doesn't involve an 8 hour layover in Denver with Frontier.

Next month they are starting up ONT-MCO. I've never flown out of ONT, but it is about 15 minutes closer to me than LAX and the parking and traffic will sure make it a more convenient airport to fly out of than LAX.

Again, the price and the perks make it worth it to me so I'll be flying it until they decide they want to switch the route again.

Somehow in all this they still manage to operate two flights from my home airport, SNA to DEN every day. I've taken these a few times and each time they have been full, but there is no connecting flights that sync up with these for some reason in DEN. Every route that I see requires a super long layover there. Seems like odd flight times for some reason.

Any way, yes. Frontiers routes and scheduling are mostly perplexing to me.

I agree the worst aspect of Frontier is their constant route changes. I flew them a lot from ATL to MSY. The flights always seemed full, and their in flight product was good. Then after less than a year they abruptly discontinued the flights. I still fly them when I can but that is not frequently because they don't currently fly where I need to go.

They recently upgraded their frequent flyer program presumably in an effort to build loyalty, but it's hard for me to see how that can happen with a constantly shifting route map. True frequent fliers would be reluctant to switch. Of course they may be making enough selling points to the bank to make it profitable.

What's weirdest to me is that there's something in the industry called "spool." Basically, almost all new routes are expected to be money losers at the start and then, if your route selection is good, your bookings "spool" up as more travellers become familiar with your service.

Apparently Frontier's business model doesn't work on "spool." Or at least they have a very demanding definition of spool that requires the route to be massively successful from the start.

I would not think that constantly changing your routes would be a good business model for an airline. But they reportedly make money, so maybe I'm wrong. And as a private company, they don't have to release much financial information to the public, so we don't really know why they do what they do, and whether it's a successful strategy.

I wonder why this aspect of their business model has not attracted more attention.

What's interesting is that at Spirit, their new(ish) CEO Robert Fornaro -- who used to run AirTran -- is trying to make that airline more "normal." I'd call it a sober and traditional approach to running an airline. At the same time, Frontier is truly trying to be a "whole different animal," by doing things that other airlines don't do, and what seem at first glance to maybe be bad ideas. I've always thought that operating flights on what seem to be random days and constantly changing your city pairs would be a path to airline bankruptcy. But that hasn't happened, at least not yet.

Frontier is definitely the "throw spaghetti against a wall and see what sticks" airline. Seems like we get a new crop of trial-balloon destinations from ATL every year.

A key test of whether a route is NOT doing well is if they have to discount it quite a bit in July. A couple of years ago I took a long weekend in July to RDU at $58 RT and I knew the route wouldn't last. They dropped it at the first opportunity.

MEM was like that as well. I hate it that they can't seem to make MCI work and that's not there this year from ATL.

On the flip side, maybe AUS is under-served and has staying power, and SLC is a real broadside against DL. CVG, the former DL hub, looks wobbly.

Seems like the only place that's been semi-consistent from ATL is DEN, and they don't have enough flights there and the ones they do are at odd times. Markets like BHM and GSP are new, and in some cases you've only got 2/week frequencies.

It looks like they're simultaneously trying to be a hub carrier (DEN), a vacation-oriented carrier (MCO, LAS and the whole cold-to-hot bit) and a point-to-point LCC (WN, NK). Normally when you're caught between business models it's not a good thing, but OTOH I'm pretty sure the spool bit is not part of the plan in most places.

In times past a legacy carrier like DL or NW would do a scorched-earth dollar-for-dollar price match if a carrier like Frontier did a hub-to-hub nonstop like ATL-SLC, but with the consolidation and capacity discipline there's less inclination to price-match. Which is a good thing in that it gives Frontier space to operate, as weird as that sometimes looks.

I'd say TTN also. Having flights from the north to Florida in the winter- many carriers can do that, but, fortunately, F9 has been consistent with keeping ATL-TTN as well, albeit not daily, but year round. It also has been somewhat consistent keeping TTN-CLT/RDU (less than daily) with some coverage during the winter.

I find flights to and for Denver to be the most stable but that's probably becasue they are based in Denver. Anything in the east is up from grabs.

It's certainly nice for us in RDU. Frontier is now flying to a number of cities nonstop that no one else is (PWM, MDT, SYR, BUF, MKE, PBI etc.) and they're driving prices down on other segments. I just wish they hadn't dropped RDU-PHL as now one way prices on that route are high again.

I think it's really hard for Frontier to compete against a legacy carrier flying from their hub -- at least in most markets. There are just so many advantages of operating from your hub. So logic suggest that non-hub flying would be more profitable for them. But the problem is that the hub cities are where the people are. Frontier crams a lot of people onto their planes, so they need big markets to operate in. How many non-hub city pairs can fill up a Frontier flight? I don't think there are an unlimited number of such markets. And in non-hub pairs, Frontier may stll have to compete against Southwest -- and Spirit. But very low costs certainly help. The key is obviously for them to stimulate demand at fare levels that are still profitable. Since we don't know that much about their finances, we don't really know how successful they are at this. They do seem to be more profitable than one would initially think, given their odd route and scheduling practices.

I agree about PHL-RDU as that was a nice route, but when AA started matching the fare, it was obvious Frontier couldn't compete. And I see now they are dropping RDU-MDT. Interesting just 2 days ago I checked the price for RDU-MDT on September 15th and it was $19. Yesterday I went to book and see that September 15th is no longer available and they are discontinuing that route as of September 5th.

The idea that there was a market for nonstop service in a large jet between Raleigh and Harrisburg strikes me as, well, ridiculous. The fact that Frontier even tried this suggests to me that they've got more airplane deliveries than markets. This is, of course, their conundrum. The hubs are where the people are, but also where the legacy carriers are. And the legacy carriers are run by management teams who are pretty sophisticated in dealing with competitors, even those with lower costs.

I still think the most likely future for Frontier is to be bought by Spirit, but that's only if Frontier is worth anything at that point.

RDU-MDT is weak, but might have worked with F9's market stimulation and a bit more time. But AA was dropping roundtrip fares to $99 on this route (connections in CLT) which probably didn't help.

I'm not a huge fan of Frontier's service (from both an in-flight comfort standpoint and operational reliablilty), but I would always pick a Frontier nonstop over a legacy connecting flight. I think most other folks would as well. But you need to have enough pax for the nonstop service. Southwest has been at that point-to-point game for a very long time. Obviously, at Frontier's prices, there will be extra demand, but I'm not sure how many more markets there are in America that can sustain point-to-point service. I guess we'll be finding out!