Frontier Future Growth
 

https://i.imgur.com/YwLvAXW.png

Frontier pilot recruiting is selling this on their Pilot Careers page. Recruiting for just about any organization is going to sell you the most idyllic picture of their company in order to attract applicants.

How firm is their aircraft purchase order? Is it a executable contract or is it more like some of these vague 'letters of intent' you'll see pop up?

Additionally, with the alleged goal of tripling their fleet in the coming years, has the company indicated where any of this growth is happening? I'm assuming more crew bases, but where in their present network stands to see growth?

Oh boy, this is about to get ugly.

I'll say that the orders are definitely real, and the aircraft are coming. Obviously they could get canceled or delayed at any time, but until that happens, they are coming.

There are many industry following news publications that closely follow and track orders. If they ever cancel or delay orders, we will know it. They can't secretly cancel or delay.

I believe that Indigo and Frontier have every intention of growing us as much as they possibly can. That's business 101. Anyone who comments below that this is all smoke and mirrors and the growth plans aren't real, clearly has virtually no understanding of how businesses work. The stock market is obsessed with growth. Every company wants to be as big as possible. The larger the fleet, the larger the profit potential.

Pilots are inherently negative and im sure we will see much doubt and negatively in this thread, but the truth is, profits are made larger by larger companies. Why do you think Southwest makes Billions while we make Millions? Its fleet size.

Our growth plans are large, but it will take a lot of time. If we grow from 1500 pilots to 3000 pilots by 2024, that's only 300 pilots a year growth, which is good but it's not exactly explosive. And to those who say the growth just hasn't happened, you are fooling yourself. Under Indigo we have grown from 600 pilots to nearly 1500. And on top of that, the number of passenger seats has increased substantially. Swapping 319s to 321s is huge growth to the airline even if it has no effect on pilot numbers.

As far as where growth occurs, I don't think they have any idea. I don't think they have any idea where they will fly the XLRs. And even if they do, they sure as hell aren't going to tell anyone! Especially not us.

I will say though that Biffle told us once that in a perfect world, we would have 2 domiciles in each time zone, 1 North and 1 South for 8 total bases.

Way too many variables to consider, of course the main one being the state of the economy in the coming years. Some are of the opinion the ULCC model is recession proof. There may be a grain of truth to that but the airline industry in general is volatile so we will never know how F9 will weather the storm until the music stops playing.

If you are looking for explosive growth from a seniority perspective, you can’t beat the legacies. They will have close to 50% turnover in the next decade without a single additional airplane on property just due to retirements. Frontier has a relatively young pilot group, with maybe 1 or 2 retirements a month being the average.

I would be surprised if we reached anything close to those ac numbers in that time frame. The only businesses that are recession proof are mortuaries, hospitals, and bars. We’re in a better position to withstand a recession than last time. But to believe we’re going to continue to grow that fast in an economic downturn is naive. Not to mention a merger or buyout before then. I hope I’m wrong.

Economists too....
 

Pilots have successfully predicted eight out of the last 3 recessions.. :)

Right, we’re going another 6 plus years without one. It’s really not a prediction it’s something that’s inevitable.

2008
 

Eleven years. I rest my case :-)
But you're absolutely correct, of course, and the last one was so severe it almost crashed the entire financial system. Hopefully the next one won't be so severe. While not recession 'proof', the LCC business model has thrived in Europe over the last 25 years, I hope we do the same.
We really don't know how people will behave when the economy goes pear shaped; will business reduce travel or choose cheaper options; will families drive instead? I. would suggest that business travelers will still be sensitive to on time performance and rapid recovery from Irregular Ops..
Blue skies..
/PL

Pilot years or human years?

11 years without a recession means its more likely. I really hope your not resting your case on the fact that there hasn’t been a recession in 11 years (we were furloughing 11 years ago as were most airlines) means there won’t be one in the next 6? Most economists (not me) are predicting mid 2020 and not as bad as the last.
I’m probably a little more skeptical than most dealing with a furlough, bankruptcies, and multiple paycuts under this management (same ones minus indigo). Assumptions your making to get to 250 ac by 2026. No merger, no buyout, no recession, no deferrals for any reason ( airbus or f9), pilot shortage not an issue, I could go on and on. I’m assuming 1 or more don’t get us to 250 that quick. We’ll find out. I like the optimism but IMO a bit unrealistic.

^^^:D^^^

Filler

U new guys sure are buying in. Like PL stated, I “Hope” your right.

Speaking of.....any rumors on an RDU base? I am very new to this forum, so I'm just in the beginning of my digging around on here but Frontier is sort of at the front of my mind at the moment. A Raleigh base would be perfect.
And just a random question, what are a few out of the country overnights?

Thanks!

No idea on RDU. It’s possible, but I wouldn’t be surprised either way. Things change so rapidly around here.

The only 3 overnights I’ve seen outside of the 48 states lately are San Juan PR, Cancun, and Punta Cana.

It’s been 66 million years since the Yucatán asteroid exterminated the dinosaurs. Does that mean we are overdue? If you flip a fair coin three times and it turns up heads each time (a 0.125 probability), does that mean the NEXT flip is more or less likely to be heads?

The comment was a humorous one and I chuckled.

https://youtu.be/syV2LkGpQB0

Yes, we are overdue for another plague of dinosaurs. :p

More likely, because you are inadvertently flipping the fair coin in an unfair manner. :p

Definitely could be worse. Thank you

Look to Spirit as an example of what happened durning the last recession. They bargained for a substantial contract against Indigo.
In fact during the last economic downturn their pay went above a few majors.

And to “unprotected pilot” who started the post, who cares if they say where the growth will happen. So much of the US market is under served by the ULCC business model F9 can throw darts at a map, start service there and be successful.

That is a gross understatement... we announced a boatload of cities out of atl a few years ago... delta proceeded to price match and drove us out of quite a few markets in a matter of a couple months... atl-mem lasted a month... what happened to mco-psm, btv, lax, sfo?? They work hard to figure out what MIGHT work... we announced like 8 cities from Cuba and went to one... that lasted maybe 3 months... city pairs disappear and change monthly... it is definitely underserved compared to the success in Europe but this isn’t Europe so we’ll just have to see

Such an obvious point, yet this somehow eluded my thinking. You're right.