Frontier announced 10 more cities today from PHL, which will bring them up to 44 daily flights to 39 cities this summer, up almost 50% over last summer. New cities below (MSP and PIT are asterisked bc they were previously announced):

Interesting, because in 2022 they CANCELLED some of these same PHL routes! I presmumed it was because there wasn't enough "friends and family" travel to these mostly non-touristy destinations and they couldn't fill the flights.

Frontier seems to have a new strategy of flying shorter routes. Like no more Vegas flights from Philly. I assume they feel they can't charge enough to pay for the fuel on the longer flights.I'm guessing these flights are part of that strategy.

In any event, it's an almost certain bet most of these routes will soon fail, so fly them while you can. Nobody has ever had any luck competing against AA at PHL, and it seems like just about every airline has tried. Oddly, Frontier is trying again even though they have already failed.

Frontier has been growing fairly strongly at PHL over the past few years, and outside of a year or so due to COVID, it has generally been steady YoY passenger growth. Enilria's cash cows/weak link posts for F9 (essentially showing how well routes are doing relative to the airline's other routes) show that PHL generally has very few weak links (bottom 20% of RASM performance) and a good number of cash cows (top 20% of RASM), for example in Q2 2023, there was 1 PHL route in the weak links and 11 in the cash cows. Not sure why you think they failed at PHL.

They are doing shorter routes for the reason you mentioned - RASM tended to fall off much faster than CASM for them because ancillary revenue doesn't scale anywhere near what it would need to for longer domestic routes - but LAS was also likely because they have been moving away from MCO/LAS flying as a lot of airlines have thrown capacity there and it has hurt yields.

As I said, many of these are routes they flew before and then eliminated. This, of course, is the long history of attempted competition at PHL. It never works. Maybe it should, but it doesn't. And, to my knowledge, no large ultra low cost airline has ever succeeded with infrequent "friends and family" routes. Sure, it can work in oddball markets like mainland to Puerto Rico, but it's highly unlikely to work between Philly and Kansas City. Let's come back in a year and two and see what happens.

Ah, it sounded like you were implying Frontier's Philly station as a whole failed rather than individual routes.

Agreed on coming back in a couple years to see. I doubt all 10 will still be here but also doubt it's an "almost certain bet most of these routes will soon fail" (outside of winter suspensions but coming back the next summer season).

Frontier will have to put their new planes somewhere. The fundamental problem is that their business model doesn't work very well in America these days. It's undoubtedly because they're selling a product Americans don't want to buy (how often do you stay in a Motel 6?), and the big airlines have figured out how to keep the customers these ultra low cost carriers could potentially attract. I don't see these trends changing. The low cost airlines had some initial success in huge leisure markets like Vegas and Orlando, but it's painfully obvious (even to the airlines' themselves) that these markets are tapped out. I think Frontier's latest Philly strategy is based on the idea that this is their best opportunity, but it's still not a GOOD opportunity.