First of all, the Gov't is unlikely to allow any such purchase. I would love if United bought Frontier and I got to be merged into their seniority system with my relative seniority. But that's extremely unlikely to happen. A big expensive airline isn't going to be able to buy a discount airline.

Any merger is likely to be between us and another discount airline not a legacy.

We have some value as the lease holder of 150 aircraft and an operating certificate. It's really hard to start an airline and get aircraft orders. There's currently a 6 or 7 year wait list to get a new Airbus. So while we might not seem like we have much value in hard assets, we have a lots of value as an up and running airline with a very desirable order book and operating certificate. Still, no one is buying us, just saying. I believe Frontier will remain independent for the foreseeable future.

 

upvote this , 100!

ticket prices have to go up, period, I mean everything else went up in prices in the past few years, some stuff quiet a lot

 

If Frontier raises prices, it’s not just the tickets that go up. People won’t pay if they know the only reason it’s more expensive is due to a new pilot contract. What we get paid now is way more than many of our pax.

Frontier will have to become not crappy in order to maintain their customers and I don’t think they are too excited to do that. Being not crappy costs money.

 

Once again, not our problem.

 

you have a very generous view of the knowledge of the traveling public, particularly Frontier customers. In my experience, most regular people only have a vague sense of the mechanics of this industry and profession, let alone insight into what pilots are paid.

Do you really think the average Frontier customer would have a representative sense of historical ticket prices, and correlate that info with news pieces in an unfamiliar industry about a new Frontier pilot contract when booking their next trip?

Most people won't notice or care, but if the tickets go up too much they may as well fly basic on AA/DL/UA on a bigger/more reliable network with inflight wifi and a free soda.

 

I actually think being crappy costs us *a lot* of money...

 

I agree with this. There are a lot of people that need wifi when they travel. My wife works in venture capital and she lives on email. No way she would ever fly an airline that didn't have internet on a flight longer than an hour. Same with first class. She's always in first if its available because she pulls out the laptop and she's in her email the entire flight.

A lot of people that might fly on Frontier, Spirit etc don't because they lack a product that they want. The problem is the cost that it takes to get there. Even United is spending money to remove Polaris seats for the new Polaris Studio because people will pay for the upgraded experience. Its pretty crazy in my opinion but the 787s will have over 60 of these on each plane. A Polaris seat from SFO to Tokyo is about $8k and these things sell out.

I can't imagine that Frontier can't add some first class or premium seats and get more revenue that way.

 

Thats generally the consensus that ****es most Frontier pilots off. We know we would be able to retain and get more customers if our management would only invest in our passengers. Yet here we are.

 

So I think we all come to the same consensus no matter how we phrase it.

We should have an amazing industry standard contract.

How management deals with it? Not our problem. That is what THEY get paid for.

 

75% of the time when someone tells me about an upcoming trip they have planned and I ask which airline they are flying on, they don't even know. People literally don't even know which airline they are flying on half the time. When we secure our new contract, 99.99% of our customers won't know about it.

The thing is, every other airline has had their costs go up too. We have a huge cost advantage and we will retain a huge cost advantage even after we sign a new contract. The ULCC business model has always been to be able to undercut the competition by at least 40%. We still still be able to do that.