Frontier Continues Massive Expansion: Nine More New Routes Announced

Frontier Continues Massive Expansion: Nine More New Routes Announced

MIAMI — As part of a massive expansion that began in July with the addition of over 85 new routes and 21 new destinations, Frontier is announcing nine more routes connecting 13 cities.

The ultra-low-cost-airline has just unveiled a new batch of point-to-point destinations from Atlanta to San Jose; Austin to Cleveland; Charleston to Chicago (ORD) and to Philadelphia; Colorado Springs to San Antonio, San Jose, Minneapolis, and Seattle; and from San Jose to Cincinnati.

These routes were announced together with some bargain prices. According to Frontier, fares start as low as $39 one way.

Frontier’s massive transformation has been carefully orchestrated by the airline’s management. According to Daniel Shurz, Frontier’s Chief Commercial Officer (CCO), the biggest change in the airline’s profile was a drastic reduction in costs by 30%.

Shurz told Airways that Frontier “increased aircraft utilization from 10 to 13 hours a day, and increased its seat density, going from 138 to 150 seats on the A319 and from 168 to 180 seats on A320s,” ramping up the airline’s efficiencies by leaps and bounds.

Daniel Shurz also believes that the increased performance is also enhanced by the economics of brand-new airliners that have joined the fleet.

“We’ve released A319s at end of their leases and getting more A320s and A321s. We’ve consolidated our technology platforms to make things easier to run,” he explained.

And even though the new Airbus A320neo aircraft have joined the fleet recently, Shurz claims that fuel burn performance charts have registered a drop in over 15% in comparison to the ceo version of the Airbus jetliner.

Even though the carrier has become a nation-wide, point-to-point operator, the CCO still sees Frontier as Denver’s hometown airline.

“We are the only one based here,” he said. “Our schedule is 40% flying in and out of Denver. What we’ve done is eliminated excess capacity in the Denver market. We have updated flying in Denver just as we have updated flying in the rest of the Frontier system.”

Frontier’s plans to go public are still on. The ultra-low-cost-carrier filed for an IPO earlier this year. The Denver-based carrier is the only remaining major U.S. airline to be privately held after Virgin America’s 2014 IPO (and subsequent 2016 purchase by Alaska Airlines).

These new destinations place Frontier as the number-one airline in Cleveland Airport, although some of these flights are seasonal. Similarly, San Antonio will now see 11 Frontier destinations.

Editor-in-Chief
Commercial Pilot, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Aviation MBA, Globetrotter, AS Roma fan, and in my free time, I fly the Airways Ship.

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