well, if we’re gonna be government employees, we should be getting a pension !

 

What do you care? You have your apps in with AL and WN.

 

Another 70M operational loss. Fuuuun

 

you don’t mention RASM up 17% and that was before our biggest competitor dragging down pricing power went out of business.

once we get our block hours utilization up it will help spread our CASM out and will probably add 5-15% additional RASM from now.

if fuel can get under control we are actually in a pretty good place to weather the storm and come out profitable. Unlike JetBlue we are not borrowing against our assets in the same manner.

that is to say, if fuel stays high for long periods of time there’s only so much we can do In those conditions.

there are much worse results we could have had in my opinion.

 

I think there’s reason to doubt fuel prices coming down any time soon. Oil supply is going to be constrained for years, thanks to big baby launching an illegal and pointless war to hold the war hostage.

So much winning!

 

I agree. I perhaps was a bit harsh on the initial read through especially seeing the forward guidance. That RASM was a nice about face.

Another drag you mentioned has been the utilization at 8.5 hours. With the rejected leases that should come up dramatically as well.

Unfortunately I don’t see fuel coming back for a while.

 

F9 doesn’t have tangible assets it can borrow against like JetBlue. JetBlue owns 75% of its aircraft outright. Frontier owns 0%.

Thats why they count their credit revolver facility as cash on hand on the balance sheet. No other airline does that. They just don’t have access to liquidity because the lack of assets.

 

Fair point on the asset base difference. JetBlue does have unencumbered aircraft. But the framing that Frontier “doesn’t have access to liquidity” doesn’t match what just happened this quarter.

Frontier grew total liquidity by $100M while posting a GAAP loss. JetBlue raised $500M in new aircraft secured debt and may pull another $250M from their accordion if fuel volatility persists.

Who’s actually constrained here? One company is internally generating cash, the other is borrowing against assets to maintain their cushion. Both are valid strategies, but they’re not the same thing.

On the revolver point, including undrawn revolver capacity in liquidity disclosures isn’t unique to Frontier. It’s a standard non-GAAP metric used across the industry. Frontier explicitly breaks out the composition in their release. It’s transparent… not being hidden.

The asset light model is also a deliberate choice, not a weakness. Operating leases let Frontier hand 24 A320neos back to AerCap when the math stopped working… try doing that with owned aircraft on your balance sheet. Spirit owned more of their fleet than Frontier and that didn’t save them. Hawaiian owned planes. Asset ownership ≠ financial strength.

The real risk for Frontier isn’t the asset structure… it’s whether fuel stays elevated long enough to grind through the cash they have.

That’s a legitimate concern. But “they don’t have access to liquidity” doesn’t square with $100M of liquidity growth in a quarter where their direct competitor was raising debt to stay even.

 

Agreed.

Given all that's going on in the world, 6.5% non-GAAP loss. Actually not as bad as I had expected...

 

anyone have the link for the earnings call??