Ultra low cost carriers in the United States have been struggling in recent years, given the industry realities, from increased labor costs, to evolving consumer preferences. They’re constantly updating their route networks in hopes of improving profitability (well, or more accurately, reducing losses).
Continue reading: Frontier Airlines Smells Blood, Attacks Spirit Airlines Routes
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Spirit is a significantly better airline than Frontier. I think Spirit just has bad name brand recognition (similar to Ryanair) but they haven’t been able to take average of it
If Spirit goes out of business, where can we go on YouTube to see passenger fighting on planes with each other, passengers fighting at check in desks with agents, and everyone pulling hair, scratching, punching, screaming, and repeating the same phrase to their opponents over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again?
Maybe Frontier can pick up that slack.
Ben obviously hasn't been following closely on Frontier networks.
They've been doing like this for years.
Well maybe not as many in one season but they do go after Spirit, Sun, Allegiant on many markets and also dropping a lot after a season too.
@ Eskimo -- Of course, Frontier always attacks the markets of other airlines, whether ULCCs or legacies. However, I don't ever recall seeing an expansion of this size, so singularly targeted at an airline.
@ splane21 -- Agree, Spirit is actually quite pleasant to fly, and has friendly staff. I'll take Spirit over Frontier any day.
I think the issue is that following the pandemic, the airline did very little to innovate and evolve, and was so focused on the merger situation, to the point that management forgot to run the airline. Now they're trying to fix things, but it's possibly too little too late.
I'm curious if anything else may have played into Spirit's finances. Frontier didn't really change their model until recently (can't have been more than a year head start compared to Spirit off the top of my head), so Frontier and Spirit were operating similar models while Spirit was working on the acquisition by jetblue. Did Spirit stop analyzing and tweaking it's route network during that time, to the point it was flying unprofitable routes that should have been cut under normal circumstances? I mean, Frontier wasn't exactly innovating much differently compared to Spirit (if my memory is correct) up until recently. Does Spirit have higher costs compared to Frontier? Did one year of sustained losses really hurt the carrier so much that they will go under while Frontier doesn't? And didn't jetblue have to pay a huge fee to Spirit because the merger failed? I just find it hard to fully understand why Spirit is in such a worse position compared to F9.
Spirit has P&W opportunity costs.
And their model isn't exactly the same.
In short, F6 has less frequency but more destinations so bad for customers, good for loads.
Then the overnight plane positionings.
Lastly, some how F6 is doing a little better and growing at ancillary revenues.
Frontier had a before tax loss of ($40) million in Q1. For Q2, a traditional stronger quarter for airlines that soared ($70) million. That tells me Frontier can't shake the ULCC image either. Maybe Spirit going out of business will change Frontier's fortunes but a bunch of additional flyers looking for a roundtrip fare of $100 won't do anything to stop the red ink.
of course F9 smells blood.
but NK's board and advisers have also likely crossed any cooperation w/ F9 off the list as part of a potential restructuring or asset sale.
F9 has hundreds of its own aircraft on order - far more than it can successfully deploy, it is losing money, and its business model is as broken as NK's
The 2 carriers have a similar business model. Why is Spirit in trouble but not Frontier? Revenue or expenses?
The problem isn't because of ULCC competitors.
It's because the legacies are now going more aggressively against ULCC.
In some markets, the prices are almost the same.
And now maybe you can explain a little more how a Bulgarian ACMI specialist airline is beating Spirit.
Frontier’s planes can even smell blood from miles away - those fancy little things at the end of the wings aren’t called “Sharklets” for nothing. 😉
Any idea what Frontier is cutting to substitute the planes in those directions.
Are most of the cuts in flying to subsidized these new routes coming from Denver?