I still think Frontier will eventually go broke
 

While they seem generally competent in flying their planes, Frontier doesn't do much else with.competence. My flight to Florida this Saturday morning was moved to Saturday evening,, which fortunately did not upset me much given my open schedule (and the fact that I was only paying $29, with no other alternative at anything close to that price point). After the schedule change, I periodically looked for a lower fare, given that sone other days we're (insanely) only $19! Curiously, though, the flight was consistently much more expensive than all their other flights this week, even though it was scheduled at a very off peak time.

I had the usual Gold elite problem of assigning myself an exit row seat at check in, and had to use chat to get it done. Before going to the airport, I checked to see where my plane was. To my surprise, it was scheduled to sit at the gate for 8 hours before the flight. I cannot understand why any airline with available equipment would wait to fly Saturday night instead of Saturday morning to Forida. Moreover, the fight was only one third full, undoubtedly due to the unpopular flight time and the unusually high fares they were charging. They then made several passengers unhappy by moving them to the back off the airplane for weight and balance, after they had paid to sit further forward.

The final annoyance was a maintenance delay to put oil in the APU, even though the plane had sat around all day.

I do not believe an airline with this level of incompetence -- especially with revenue management and scheduling -- can possibly survive. This business is just too hard for such nonsense, especially since Frontier is poorly positioned for the current trend favoring more premium air travel .

It nags at me too. I look at all the gimmicks and offers and wonder if I trust in the future enough to gamble on a return from Go Wild and more potentially lucrative status.

Planes are still full and prices have been going up. I don't think they are a good long-term investment, but someone has to fill the void they do. Spirit will be gone soon enough. One ULCC will continue on, I don't see anyone else taking on this part of the market. United can talk smack all they want about it, low fare options for leisure travelers is a massive market and you all if ULCC's were gone those Basic fares would disappear and this market would get left massively unserved.

Now, that would be a good merger - the two underdogs. The Spirit of the Frontier.

Everyone thinks that Spirit and Frontier will eventually somehow merge, and that is probably the likeliest of the scenarios. If Frontier had creative management like America West had 20 years ago, I could see some viable airline rising from these ashes. But I haven't yet seen that creativity at Frontier. They are just a bad airline. The whole business model seems to be growth oriented with the sale and leaseback of aircraft, and that strategy is predicated on expansion that everyone now knows is unrealistic. Frontier and Spirit need to merge and then SHRINK for awhile, concentrating on the limited markets where there is a demand for their services at price points they can command.

As I said, perhaps really good management could pull this off, but what we've seen from Frontier makes it doubtful to me that they will succeed. Of course, zombie airlines do tend to linger, and that is probably likely here as well as they search for a viable business model.

Bingo. As the economy continues to get worse, more and more people will be looking for cheaper, alternative options, especially as the legacy airlines keep pushing more and more premium products, taking away additional coach seats from everyone.

That being said, I still have no idea how they make money on some of these flights, especially at some of the prices I pay ($19-65). Sometimes the flights are full, sometimes they aren't.

But it would be really, really interesting to see the breakdown of their revenue streams, how much of it is from discount den/go wild fees, how much of it is from up charges on seats and bags, and how much is from actual flights. I know credit card revenue is a big time money maker for Delta and others, but I can't imagine that many people have the Frontier card to where it's making up as significant of a revenue source as some of the big time players. Maybe it's similar to a Costco situation where those "membership" fees really are a huge chunk of their revenue that allows them to sell product closer to cost than their competitors because they are getting so much money from something that doesn't cost them anything and encourages future use. Obviously they'd have a more compelling case for this if they were actually profitable the last few quarters, but it will be interesting to see how things play out. I don't see them going away any time soon unless there is some major screw up that causes them a bunch of losses all at once (like the Southwest network crash).

And I hope they stick around for a long time. I fly them frequently and never really have any major problems. Cheap fares, free bags and seat upgrades. I really, really can't complain. I have realistic expectations about what I'm buying, how much it cost me, and I'm flexible, so I think Frontier is great.

I wonder the same thing, but having flown recently with a few people, I think I understand how the average traveler thinks when booking Frontier. I've tried to tell these people to do stuff like check in at the absolute last moment, as they usually fill the middle seats first. Several friends say they don't want to risk it so they want to pay for the seat. I'm sure others get upsold with the way check-in or booking is set up to direct you to the upgrade buttons and then asking if you're sure you want to risk not having a seat assignment.

Last quarter, Frontier claimed they received $66.70 in ancillary revenue per passenger. That seems quite high -- since if you're paying that you might be better off flying a major airline. A little bit of that is likely fake. Like I recently bought tickets for my wife and I to fly to Florida. For both tickets, we paid a grand total of $45.96 (less than $23 a ticket). They didn't get to keep much of that, getting only $7.60 in "airfare" and $7.20 in a "carrier interface charge" -- the latter of which I assume they lump into "ancillary revenue," even though it's a ticketing fee that passengers can't really avoid. The rest is government taxes. Apparently most passengers do buy stuff like bags and seats from them. It still doesn't look like much of a business to me.

$66.70 in ancillary revenue is absolutely realistic. On most of my recent flights, the Group 1 line with carry-ons was massive, probably 60%-75% of the passengers... but the overwhelming majority of those people were in regular seats, which suggests they didn't have an elite status to make those bags free. I also see them selling quite a few drinks and even snacks on board, and you don't have to sell a whole lot of $5 cokes and $10 alcohol drinks to make up a lot of money quick. There are probably people who indulge quite a bit, and they balance those of us who get the perks for less.


They're a pretty good airline. They're a bad business.

Lots of reasons. Didn't have the proper crew ready and rested to fly in the morning. Could be the replacement crew got delayed somewhere else. Could be that the plane didn't have room to park at the destination airport until a certain time. Could be the plane did need some maintenance before it could fly again. Just because a plane is sitting at the gate doesn't mean the equipment is ready or the destination is ready for it, and getting the plane to the next destination as fast as possible isn't always the best option either.

I'm genuinely curious what your gripe is? For them to charge less and have more people on your flight? Charge more and be a more competent, profitable business?

Frontier is a point to point operator for the most part, with a few different "hubs," so it's going to fly the same routes back and forth most of the time. The plane is already going back to the destination, and since the majority of it's costs on the flight besides fuel are fixed, Frontier's costs to fly are not that much higher if its 1/3rd full or completely full, or even completely empty. The plane is making the same amount of money on cargo no matter how many passengers are on board. The empty equipment (zero weight) is usually like 50% of the total weight. The fuel is usually 30% of the total weight (if the tanks are full), passengers and cargo make up the remaining 20% of the weight. If you don't have as many passengers, you don't have to take as much fuel. The savings compounds, especially on longer flights (since the added weight of extra fuel for longer flights requires it's own extra fuel to account for the added extra fuel weight). So there is a point somewhere mathematically where if the plane isn't all that full it probably doesn't make sense to take on additional passengers unless they are paying a higher price to account for the extra fuel. It's not always about having the the lowest prices to keep the plane full on every single flight.

I also suspect Frontier uses weird, off flights like this and keeps them priced high on purpose to give the illusion that the prices are higher and more dynamic than they actually are. Having some flights priced higher with other flights priced lower probably encourages purchasing bags on the lower priced flights. If Frontier was always super cheap and the flights were always full, that might attract a different type of customer who isn't willing to do the extra spend, and isn't always worth the additional fuel costs.

So there are plenty of reasons to keep prices high for, both to save money on certain off flights, but also to ensure you don't end up devaluing the rest of your tickets. This flight sure looks like a good deal next to this higher priced one on an unpopular Saturday night route (that no one was buying anyway, at any price), which might encourage someone to finally pull the trigger (and possibly buy some bags or flight insurance or whatever else).

I'm sure those several passengers were somehow able to get over their brief unhappiness during takeoff when they were allowed to sit anywhere on a 1/3rd full plane for the remainder of the flight. ;)

So this actually makes a lot of sense. The APU is basically a small jet engine in the tail of the airplane that helps power some stuff during flight, but also everything else when the engines aren't running. When the plane is parked, it's attached to power at the gate, so the majority of the airplane's power is coming from the ground. The APU is powering the plane's A/C unit and keeping it cool all day while it sits at the gate (it's significantly cheaper and more efficient to leave this running all day and keep the plane cool than to shut it off, let the plane warm up, and then run it hard trying to cool it off again when its time to fly).

So my guess is that it wasn't an issue when it ran all day, and wasn't noticed until the pilot was doing his preflight check or during pushback when the engines fired up and the sensors came on. These things happen and aren't due to incompetence. Incompetence would be ignoring this to save some time and having issues mid flight.

​​​​​​I donno dude, sounds like you got a $29 flight on an empty plane that arrived safely. That's pretty darn competent no matter how you look at it in my mind.

This has been my experience as well. I have tried to convince several friends to go Frontier and they are all skeptical. Just like me, it took a few flights for them to understand how it works. They all bought some extras for their first few flights as well.

You presumably also renewed your Discount Den pass as well, and I'm sure during your Discount Den membership there have been some flights were you weren't getting rock bottom fares (for whatever reason). The average fare price paid in Q3 of 2025 was $39.74 (which makes sense if you're finding $23 fares) with the majority of the revenue coming off bags and seats.

Because you can't see the forrest from the trees because you are looking at it from your very specific use case: flying as cheap as possible while being an elite member and not spending another dime on anything else. And there's nothing wrong with that, I fly Frontier the same way you do, so were are basically the same in that regard. But we are not the majority of Frontier's business, we are a cost of doing business.

Most of Frontier's customers are living their lives, not posting on forums on how to exploit airline loyalty programs for maximum benefit on every single flight. They are just trying to find a cheap flight in the moment, and a lot of times they end up with a cheap base fare and a bunch of additional fees.

But, if it wasn't for these people paying all these extras, you and I would not be flying cross country for $19-35 on a regular basis, so I don't really see what the issue is.

I've had the same experience. People buying bags and paying a little extra for "Board First" instead of just buying the carry on. There was a point a few years ago they were getting $70-$80 in per passenger in ancillary fees.

In a "surprising-but-not-really-surprising" move, Frontier has immediately replaced Barry Biffle, it's long-time CEO. There are also new reports that the merger talks with Spirit have resumed. Perhaps these 2 matters are related. As already noted in this thread, Frontier isn't a well run company and doesn't currently have a viable business model, so change is obviously needed. There isn't a lot of media/Wall Street coverage of this airline, so it's hard to get much insight into what's likely to happen next year, but I think it's safe to assume that significant changes will be forthcoming.

One thing about Spirit is that the late-nights (Fallon, Colbert, etc.) are pretty unanimous in using them when they want to make a joke about a bad airline or what flying has become. Does Frontier want to merge into that? As the midwest saying goes, "The rocks come with the farm" and that's a big one. Even if they keep the Frontier name for the new entity or come up with some new name, if they make Spirit go away then that reputational "baggage" will still follow along.

I think most travellers also know Frontier offers a poor travel experience. I don't think a merger would impact their reputation much.

Oh, I think there's value in having someone out there who's worse than you and can be the butt of the jokes. It's like being Alabama and able to say "at least we're not Mississippi." Or any number of other analogous things.

I donno, second highest rated water safety by a mile tells me that Barry had at least a moderately well run company. ;)

Which Airlines Have The Safest Tap Water? A New Study Breaks It Down

2026 CENTER FOR FOOD AS MEDICINE & LONGEVITY AIRLINE WATER STUDY

Over the course of three years, from October 1, 2022, to September 30, 2025, the Center for Food as Medicine and Longevity conducted a massive 35,000-sample study that ranked 10 major and 11 regional airlines based on the quality of tap water provided during flights.

Major Airlines

Delta Air Lines: 5.00 (Grade A)
Frontier Airlines: 4.80 (Grade A)
Alaska Airlines: 3.85 (Grade B)
Allegiant Air: 3.65 (Grade B)
Southwest Airlines: 3.30 (Grade C)
Hawaiian Airlines: 3.15 (Grade C)
United Airlines: 2.70 (Grade C)
Spirit Airlines: 2.05 (Grade D)
JetBlue: 1.80 (Grade D)
American Airlines: 1.75 (Grade D)

Take that, legacy airlines.