Speaking of Miami, sounds like Biffle has plans for it.

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South America and Hawaii Could Also Welcome Frontier

South America and Hawaii could also be on the cards, with Biffle’s sights set on Miami (MIA) as a main departure point for Frontier’s Airbus A321XLRs into South America.

“From Miami, you can pretty much reach just about anywhere in South America. It also enables us to do other interesting things. You can fly from the [U.S.] west coast to the Caribbean.” explained Biffle.

Biffle even hinted that there might even be a premium product in the future for Frontier.

 

Maybe we can get a good price on Spirts used Big Front Seats

 

I think Europe could work - like England , Ireland to PHL - then you could connect on our network all across the US. You could also connect on Wizz all over Europe. That article said Shannon airport was talking to F9 management. Also saw something about F9 talking to space ex about getting WiFi.

Hawaii could work also, but it is a more expensive destination. I know Allegiant tried it a while back when they had the 757s but it didn’t work out. Not sure why.

 

Someone more in the know can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe Allegiant got the 757s for the sole purpose of going to Hawaii. They didn’t go to Hawaii *because* they had 757s. So, it seemed like a backwards ways of going about it and running a small ETOPS fleet type for a single route isn’t the most cost effective.

The beauty of the XLRs will be that they can be run long distances or on a regular 321neo route without any increase in cost. As long as they are ETOPS we could give Hawaii a go and drop it just like we do any other route without looking back. The case for Allegiant and the 757 fleet wasn’t so easy.

Hawaii is an expensive destination and getting there is a big chunk of the cost. ULCC prices and a weeks worth of acquired back problems may just be what that family of 5 needs in order to take their dream Hawaiian vacation.

 

My guess: we try Hawaii and then pull out

It's a tough market. Hyper competitive. We will end up doing MIA to Columbia and stuff like that instead. And the XLR will be able to take 240 people from PHL to Southern California with a winter headwind

 

I hope we skip Hawaii. That never makes money, most “revenue” pax are cashing in their credit card points on those flights while the remaining seats are filled with non revs.

Deep into South America is definitely happening.

Europe. Possible, if it makes sense and if we can connect our pax on Wizz easily. Frankie never made a secret he wants to connect all 4 of his airlines. Big if, but if this happens we need to seriously start thinking about contract language. I don’t know how JetBlue is is doing it but 6/7 hours things like rest / overrides / IROs need to be on the table.

Im all for it if it makes business sense. Ten years ago people said no way people will sit on those seats for 5,5 hours. Now our daily Ontario, CA - MCO red eyes are packed .. I highly doubt they won’t be sitting on those same seats for 30 more minutes to get to Europe from PHL for a fraction of what AA is charging on a 78 same route. Especially if they can connect on Wizz Air and be in Budapest a few hours later drinking cheap beer.

That said our load / route planning dept has been very effective last 8 years so whatever they come up with Im good with.

That is as long as they assign me all the flights under one hour same time zone. I want to read bed time stories to my kids. Wake me up when SNN pops up in premium

 

Since sailplane was asking about this in another thread….

This is data gathered from people who have finished or are very near finishing IOE and have been able to bid for their schedule via our bidding system. As you can see PHX is showing a touch more senior than other bases in this regard currently. However, our SL shows all persons in the Oct class getting PHX or Vegas. There is zero doubt that many of those people want out of PHX or Vegas and will be awarded other bases on the coming bid that is open right now. The delay between bid, award, and start date is currently as such;

Nov 9: Bid opens
Nov 23: Bid closes
Nov 24th-ish: Bid award
March 2: Effective start date for award

Since you mention you are coming from another industry I will assume you are older and therefore have greater seniority in your class that begins Nov 28th. If for some reason you don’t get PHX as your primary base, which I find unlikely, you will almost certainly be in that base by April. Which means after training you will have spent a grand total of two months commuting to, I would guess, LAS since it is the other junior base.

As other have mentioned base bids come out every month with each new class. Delay to start in your newly awarded base is about 4 months. And if for some reason hiring stopped tomorrow we have quarterly base trade potential.

 

This is great data. To add to this, as someone junior in the august class, my “what if” says I can hold ATL in March. By the time I actually get off OE, I’ll sit 7 days of RSV in Vegas in December. OE times are starting to really stretch out it seems.

 

If we do it like B6, it would mean a special qual and that’s all you’d do. Sixteen hour, three day trips, every one with a red-eye?

No.Thanks.

(Bill, Barry and Brad will figure out some way to make it even worse than B6… Guaranteed.)

 

Thanks for taking the time to post. Great info