davywavy

Frontier has a presence at ORD.

Some of the flights to south-of-the-border/Caribbean are scheduled Frontier as well as Apple charter.

DenverBrian

Hmmm. I looked only ex-DEN and didn't see anything; I guess F9 doesn't want to go against UA and AA there.

Interestingly, the website claims ORD-DEN service on Sundays will start March 3 but nothing the other way. And actual flights don't show up in search. What up with that?

davywavy

Probably a repo for the Apple flights, although some repo from MDW. It's a complex schedule - the DEN-CLE-CUN/PUJ aircraft also serves PIT and PHL to CUN and PUJ.

There are domestic routes (ORD-STL e.g.) which Frontier flies for Apple but not as scheduled Frontier - at least not yet.

The airline also has a Chicago crew base, to service MDW and ORD.

DenverBrian

And yet no service from their main hub to/from ORD. Curious.

lougord99

[QUOTE=DenverBrian;20237049Interestingly, the website claims ORD-DEN service on Sundays will start March 3 but nothing the other way.[/QUOTE]

If you go to Denver from Chicago - why would you want to go back?

davywavy

All in good time, perhaps?

It's been a year since Dave Siegel took over as CEO and the process of separation from Republic began. In that year he has turned the airline around financially and pulled Frontier back from the precipice.

Frontier is now flying profitably, which is, in itself, an achievement. It isn't profitable enough yet, it needs to build up capital reserves, but it is getting there. He has - in some part - achieved this by rigid fleet discipline and also - in some part - by removing Frontier from numerous competitive routes.

DEN-CLE exists because they have to have an aircraft at CLE. They used to fly DEN-CLE as an expensive (non-rev) repo but now Frontier consolidates at CLE. It has the bonus of avoiding competition with Southwest on DEN-CAK which should do good things for yield.

Same with DEN-CVG. That aircraft will help serve CVG-CUN/PUJ - consolidation and avoiding a repo - and it has the added bonus of avoiding direct competition with Southwest on DEN-DAY.

So DEN-ORD may happen one day. Meanwhile, we have TTN-MDW, which is the first expansion at MDW that Frontier has made.

It's a process. T'ain't going to happen all at once.

knope2001

Although it's certainly possible that Frontier could dump MKE-DEN, it seems to do reasonably well. It currently operates 2x most dates (3x other days), and by mid April it's 3x most days. Then in mid May it goes to 3x/day each day, two of which are A320's.

Although this is obviously less frequency than in the past, DEN frequencies are thinner than historic averages in many markets. Here's what summer 2013 looks like, averaged to the nearest whole number:

5x/day DFW LAS LAX SLC
4x/day MDW SNA PHX PDX SAN SEA SFO
3x/day IND MCI MKE MSP OMA DCA
2x/day ABQ AUS IAH BNA LGA OKC MCO STL
1x/day ANC ATL BIS BZN BKG CVG DRO DSM DTW FLL GRR JAC LIT MSN MSY SBA FSD GEG TPA
Subdaily BLI BMI CID CLE FAI FAR RSW GTF GSO MDT TYS MOT PHF RFD SBN

Comparing DEN-MKE to Frontier Denver peers by length (plus or minus 200 miles of DEN-MKE), local yield in cents per mile on DEN-MKE ranked 6th best ouf of 16 from Q3 2012:

18.44 STL
18.43 DTW
18.06 AUS
18.04 SMF
17.94 SAN
17.63 MKE
17.58 LAX
17.46 SNA
17.06 BNA
16.96 SFO
16.95 PDX
16.58 IND
15.92 SEA
15.58 DAY
15.53 MDW
15.07 MSY

And when it comes to local onboard passengers per departure, MKE was in the middle, 8th out of 16.

76.5 MDW
66.9 SNA
64.7 MSY
60.4 DAY
60.4 SEA
59.3 AUS
58.3 PDX
58.2 MKE
57.5 IND
57.3 STL
57.2 SAN
55.5 SFO
52.0 LAX
47.4 BNA
47.2 DTW
42.2 SMF

So while Milwaukee isn't the top performer out of Denver, it ranks relatively well in terms of yield and number of local passengers. And it ranks in the top quarter of Denver markets in capacity Frontier is offering this summer.

Again, that's no certainty it will never be cut. But it's not an obvious goner.

knope2001

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piotrkol1

If that were to happen, and now with the AA/US merger, MKE would be down to only four airlines...

BlueHorseShoe2000

Thanks for the analysis. I'm quite surprised to see this.

Historically, MKE-DEN has not done all that well from a yield standpoint. In fact, this was the very first route Midwest moved to Saver Service and the reason was that fares generally were on the weak side.

The local traffic component is also interesting. The first flight leaves at 5:50 am and arrives in DEN at 7:29 am. This might be good for connections but is a bit early for many O&D travelers (especially those on business). Not unworkable by any means but the scheduling is a bit on the extreme side.

In any event, the purpose of my original post was not to imply that Frontier's exit is imminent but that a complete withdrawl from MKE wouldn't be too shocking if it were to occur. Frontier is going through a number of changes at the moment and no one should assume the MKE route is safe by any means. To put things in perspective, your analysis above shows strong yields for SMF however I believe that station was recently cut (or announcement that it will be cut).

Time will tell, of course.

Earthlings

Apparently, Frontier is in the international terminal (5) at ORD! Anyone fly Frontier out of T5?

MikeFromMKE

Well, they are flying internationally...

Earthlings

There are international flights flying out of the other terminals. But I think it is cool that they get to fly out of the international terminal.

DenverBrian

Indeed, DEN-TTN is now available as one-stop service, presumably through MDW, starting in April. Very interesting.

knope2001

DEN-MKE was the first Saver route, but I think things are relative here. Midwest's 2x2 Signature needed high fares to succeed, and the local business market MKE-DEN wasn't nearly as large or as lucrative as the big eastern markets were. But what were soft local MKE-DEN yields compared to Midwest MKE-LGA a few years ago are not necessarily bad local yields for Frontier on DEN-MKE compared to the rest of their Denver network.

True, but Southwest's flights have largely been about the same times. Right now I think the morning flights are 30 minutes apart (5:50 and 6:20) but I think it was 6:00 and 6:15 last summer. United's twice-daily CRJ's are not all that much of a factor in the bulk local market, though I'm sure they have their loyalists.

Definite agreement that nobody should assume the market is safe, but I wanted to point out that just because Frontier slashed everything else doesn't necessarily mean DEN goes too. Everything cut in MKE was about Milwaukee but MKE-DEN is really about Denver.

You're right that SMF has been cut even though it had better than average local yield, but it had comparably thin local traffic. To get an idea of what the two together combine to produce, here's the list of the two multiplied together to get total local onboard passenger cents per mile, and then divided by 100 to make it dollars per mile. So these numbers are how much revenue did Frontier get just from onboard local passengers for every mile flown. For every mile they flew MDW-DEN they earned $11.88 in local revenue.

11.88 MDW
11.68 SNA
10.72 AUS
10.56 STL
10.26 SAN
10.26 MKE
9.89 PDX
9.74 MSY
9.62 SEA
9.54 IND
9.41 DAY
9.41 SFO
9.15 LAX
8.70 DTW
8.08 BNA
7.61 SMF

This does nothing to try and estimate the volume of connection passengers nor the quality of their yield, so this is definitely not a broad indication of how well or how poorly each route did overall. But since local traffic tends to be the highest yield, it can be a fairly good indicator. On this list SMF ranks lowest, DTW which is being cut to 1x is also near the bottom, and DAY which is moving to CVG is below average. But some of the highly-ranked ones are not seeing expansion -- but few existing DEN markets have.

Of course we don't know Frontier's future in MKE, and time will tell. But now and then people have suggested that MKE was bound to be fully cut by F9 because of all the other cuts here. But I don't think that Frontier's cutting of all the Milwaukee hub stuff says much about how strong or weak MKE is as a spoke for the Denver hub.