New aircraft positions will be sold and so will existing aircraft. Indigo isn’t interested in rebranding

While the sky isn't falling (yet), and your data is correct (I'm on reserve and credited about 55 hours this past month), the model as we implement it IS dead. There's no way around it.

Also, keep in mind that PREMIUM isn't always a product of not enough staffing as it is not the correct use of (or scheduling of) available staffing.

We are all frustrated. I will anxiously await the Q2 results along with the rest of us.

You need to grab a drink and relax. If you've already had a drink you need to not drink and post.

We can’t sell existing aircraft as we don’t own any. They are all owned by leasing companies. I guess we could give them back but I’m sure there's a stiff penalty for breaking the lease agreement.

A lot of drama and doomsday talk here.

Let's look at a few facts for perspective.

Frontier was profitable in the full year of 2024. $85 Million net profit for the year. Yes, we lost about 40 Million in Q1 but even after that loss we ended the quarter with $889 Million in liquidity.

Our biggest competitor is in deep, deep trouble and likely to shrink significantly or go away all together which could give us a near monopoly of the low end of the market.

We are far from dead. Everyone needs to relax.

we have losses in what should’ve been our most profitable quarter which typically subsidizes the other quarters.


it’s not doom and gloom to see that this isn’t a frontier problem this is a product people don’t want. JetBlue isn’t making profit spirit isn’t making profit we aren’t making profit.


that’s very much worrisome. Years have come and gone since Covid. What has changed is there are products to compete with us. We need a revolution in our product not slapping make up on a pig. You’re being silly when you act like this realistic conversation of the state of affairs is being doom and gloom.


after we post losses this quarter again feel free to come back and tell us all how optimistic you are about our product.

I bet you don’t even take your family on us for vacations or travel.

Actually we were making a profit. Things got a bit whack this year. CanT puT my finger on iT why?

We have MIGHT (depending on Wednesday) losses on a sector of travel that is HUGELY swung by the economy. We don't have business travelers that will always need to be moving like the legacies and most of our passengers are probably not doing too hot financially speaking right now.

The first 4 months of the year have been nonstop ups and downs on the economy and economic outlook based on what our government (president) is doing that day. Tarriffs this, tarriffs that. People's lives are expensive. Economists were spelling doom and gloom. Of course people won't be traveling unless they truly need to.

It is said that demand is back, which we are seeing. It is all up to the call on what the numbers are, but I am actually kind of expecting minimal losses/break even, maybe even a slight profit. Scaling back flying while overselling flights is better than flying with open seats in a world where nothing is certain right now. Even though our CEO is saying travel is back with a vengence and the TSA numbers are showing that as well...

But what do I know? I am just a pilot. I don't get paid to worry about this and I don't get paid to figure it out either, my 3 aviation management classes with my degree didn't prepare me to do someone's job who does this for a living and has multiple degrees and years of experience.

Oh, and I do take my family on us sometimes, if it works out scheduling wise....but of course, the preference is a legacy because flights for plentiful and the route network is usually 1 leg anywhere I need to go any day. BUT, that is also because they have been around for 80+ years with multiple, multiple, multiple rounds of consilidations and mergers.

Wonder what people on this thread will say if we have a marginal profit this quarter… BUT BUT BUT WE ARE STILL SCREWED 🤣. Yah making a profit here in the grand scheme of things is not a big factor but it shows that the airline can still make profits with their business model getting squeezed. In the end of the day Frontier ULCC will have to change in order to survive. As United grows by an entire spirit airlines size fleet next year a sh*t ton of ASM’s are going to flood the US market and we will not be able to compete on “cost is king any longer”. RASM will need to increase due to this along with the airline unable to grow out of this problem. That’s why first class is here, along with other things coming down the pipe. It’s the same thing that’s happening over at Southwest.

like I said take a breath and go touch some grass… if you want to leave, leave when you can. It’s really that simple.

"making a profit" is not the magical medicine to make music start playing and butterflies fly in the morning. It needs to be substantial enough to communicate to Wall Street and others that the business model is still solid. Most important, it is important for credibility.

You either have a loss, break even, or made a profit. "Made a five dollar profit" is technically a profit.

I think some of us need to stop wistfully flipping thru old 2019-2021 photo albums about "how it used to be" and realize the world is different. COVID is behind us, 5 years to be exact.

Big-3 is making changes to embrace the near environment. ULCC or LCC-ish airlines are having serious issues. JetBlue, SWA all previously great companies are having trouble swimming in the current ocean.

What is Barry doing? beside's MF-ing the "international revenge travel" and lazy work from homers?

little to no open time, LAV's that smell like a latrine, and rude gate agents at major hubs.

Is he trapped in 2021 ?

I will be awaiting Aug 5 results, like all of us. Note this is a company presentation, with the accompanying "spin"

oh, and, how about that contact? maybe that gets mentioned Aug 5

Jeezus, you guys aren’t going to pass your next medical. For many of you, this must be your first round of contract negotiations and experience on the airline economic roller coaster. This round of negotiations has so many similarities to the last, I’ve lost track making comparisons; prior to any contract AIP we’re going to appear miles apart and you won’t get a single indication otherwise. That’s not special to us, it’s almost every pilot group. Excluding black swan events (i.e. 9/11, COVID) this industry moves and reacts in slow motion. You shouldn’t get hung up on quarterly results unless you’re an investor. You need to tune out Kirby’s talking points, he’s been trying to speak Frontier out of existence since he took over at United. We’re still here.

Deal hunting for cheap tickets comes and goes, and as Barry likes to say, it’ll be “back in vogue” at some point. In the meantime the company is trying to reposition themselves to be slightly closer to the Legacy product while providing value (e.g. free check bags). For instance, they’re offering add-on travel insurance policies to provide travel recovery options (on all carriers) to address the shortfalls of low-frequency routes; cool, wish we had done that long ago. As of late 2024 corporate travel agents can now book travel on us (“First Class” travel anyone?). Yeah, sure I’d like to see WiFi and as Starlink tries to poach carriers across the industry, I think we’ll see them make a deal with F9. It isn’t going to sink us in the short-term.

Also, there’s PLENTY that may be happening in the background. Indigo/Frontier shot offers at Spirit for several years before a merger agreement was announced. I’m not thoroughly convinced it’s a dead idea, and that with enough changes it could be made to fit again.

We’ll see, enjoy the show.

You cannot fake an sec filing GAAP cannot be messed with. So to say they’re so smart and hiding money to shrink their profits for their stock holdings into oblivion is ignorant.

Oh boy, insurance did you check the cost of this insurance on a ticket?


first class without WiFi. I’m sure that’ll turn us around.

business travel hasn’t come back. The legacies have seats they sell to undercut us. There isn’t a market for our product, these changes aren’t relative to the contract negotiating cycles. This is an example of how we are out classed.

It is $9.75 per ticket per leg with a family of 2.

Filler for reply.

Thanks for your replies. Well reasoned and appreciated. We are in an uphill position. I hope the environment shifts and we can again be disruptive to the legacy carriers. Right now they’ve routed us and we are pulling back. We need some changes that are worth their weight in gold. The cheap options aren’t working. We need more for less which isn’t going to happen without investment which they seem to avoiding like the plague according to CD we are not putting in WiFi which was a done deal until the tariffs messed that plan up. We’ve seen such a sharp pull back that we aren’t investing into new stuff we are just trying to hold status quo due to uncertainty. The uncertainty hasn’t lifted. So things aren’t going to improve anytime soon according to the C suite.

Seems fairly reasonable, if it works well. Would you agree?


Here’s the AI summary of the program:


Frontier Airlines offers "Disruption Assistance for Any Reason" as a way to manage flight disruptions
. This service provides passengers with the following benefits in cases of delays (2+ hours) or cancellations:

• Rebooking on any airline: The passenger can rebook on any available airline to the same destination for the same or next day.
• 100% refund option: If the passenger prefers not to rebook, they can receive a full refund (excluding the cost of the Disruption Assistance) and keep their Frontier reservation.
• Automatic Notifications: Passengers receive automatic notifications regarding their flight disruptions.
• Self-service options: The service allows for real-time, self-service options for managing the disruption.
• Coverage starts 24 hours before departure, offering protection when it is most needed.

Additional notes

• This "Disruption Assistance for Any Reason" is a relatively new offering from Frontier Airlines, available since July 30, 2025.
• It's powered by Hopper Technology Solutions (HTS).
• This service is available exclusively when booking on FlyFrontier.com.
• Frontier Airlines tickets are generally non-refundable. However, refunds are available in specific circumstances, such as canceling within 24 hours of booking (for flights 7 days or more away) or for flights canceled or significantly delayed by Frontier.
• For questions or more detailed information about the Disruption Assistance, it's advisable to check the Frontier Airlines website or app, or contact their customer service.

When I asked AI about average COST:

The cost of Frontier Airlines’ Disruption Assistance for Any Reason varies by flight. Based on available information, pricing typically ranges from $10 to $19 per flight. For example, a flight from Chicago O’Hare (ORD) to Boston (BOS) was quoted at $10, while a flight from New York (JFK) to Los Angeles (LAX) was quoted at $19. Since the cost depends on the specific route and booking, an average cost is roughly estimated to be around $15 per flight, though this can fluctuate. For precise pricing, check Frontier’s website during the booking process.

DrJekyll MrHyde has experience behind him/her and is quite realistic on this.

Frontier earnings are important but so is remaining here and being prepared for when the broader economic cyclical changes come home to roost. Keeping costs low and offering an option for a better product should help drive revenues higher. Obviously WiFi at this point is something that most customers expect to have access to. If it is $2.5-$5 per device a significant percentage of passengers would purchase it if it’s $10 or up that would probably drop off a bit.

The point being prolonged financial pressures are generally not beneficial for the legacy carriers. They don’t want high percentages of each flight having to be sold at basic economy pricing. A recession is not completely out of the question. The WSJ believes we are heading that way. Corporations don’t love business environments that change daily or weekly. Some corporations gave 2 sets of forward estimates or didn’t provide any at all. When faced with uncertainty Corporations clamp down. When families are uncertain about what lies ahead they clamp down too. People with less means clamp down sooner. Being here to fly people around for a low price has historically been a good business to be in when times are tough. When times are tough people will really hunt for the lowest price.

Just an opinion YMMV. I’m old.

We may make money, we may lose money. The key metric to monitor is the increase in RASM compared to CASM-exfuel. If the RASM increase is greater than the CASM-exfuel, the management plan is working. If not, it's going to be a rough road ahead.

Long term, absolutely.

But this spring and summer was an anomaly as people and businesses braced for tariff uncertainty. Trump injected an incredible amount of uncertainty into the economy in the spring and all the airlines saw a drop in bookings. As a result prices were down and I assume that our revenue will be down as there was pricing pressure.

Looks like the earnings are out...

https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives...n-20250630.htm

70m loss. RASM down $0.20 to almost $9.00 flat. CASM (excluding fuel) 7.50 up from in 2024 6.24 .

Passengers (thousands) 8,499 in 2025 vs 2024 8,899 Load factors were actually up about 1% YOY, to close to 80%.

It is true there was a huge demand dip with tarriffs and uncertainty a few months ago for those 3 or so weeks, but we will see how the next earnings call fares since it will not include that big dip and only include the "surge and revenge of the travelers" per bb.

Travel demand was down this spring and summer industry wide. Ticket prices were down and we simply didn't bring in enough revenue.

In the low demand market, we lower ticket prices to keep the load factors up (which we did) but the prices were too low.

Not great, but not a crisis either.

Agree.... Our numbers weren't great, but they were also because we lost about 500k passengers in the quarter which obviously will reduce the revenue, likely due to the economic issues we have seen and will continue to see due to the current president and his whiplash of proposals and tarriffs. It sucks to see a loss, but seeing these load factors checks out, my flying then was pretty half ful to 80% full planes. Compared to the last month, I have had nothing but near full or oversold every leg.

There is nothing at this point that shows the airline on track to being profitable in the future. The legacies have the airline beat on almost every level. Wouldn’t doubt frontier is on the same track, just behind spirit in this case. I wonder what the plan is toward becoming profitable because every plan that has been tried has fallen short. No guidance has been given on that.

No it is not. Stop defending management's poor management. Spirit and JetBlue have cut routes and are bleeding wounded animals.

Premium, affluent travelers are happy to spend money and travel. Wal-Mart shoppers are not.

Guess who we are. Guess who we can't capture? we don't even have Wi-Fi.

Management still can't deliver.

https://www.travelandtourworld.com/n...he-new-update/

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/22/summ...on-planes.html

Coming from a general optimistic person about this place this is definitely a crisis. These are very very bad results and context matters.

We were supposed to be double digit positive margins this summer now we are double digit negative. We posted this terrible of results without a pilot or FA contract in place. Add those costs and you have a REAL problem. We posted this terrible of a performance this summer despite flying 10-15% less per plane and pilot. We should have truly been an on time machine this summer but we were the worst again. We are seeing that the passengers don’t flow down to Frontier if they can’t afford legacies, they just don’t fly. We are needlessly burning through money that should be being used to improve every aspect of our operation. The relentless focus on costs has cost us millions in revenue.

This is definitely a crisis and an awful result.

Barry:

almost exact quote or 99% version

"We are not planning on an improvement of demand to improve profitability"

My opinion: Get ready for early-outs and other leave programs

Here we go First words (quick TLDL for what I could furiously type)

- atc issues ( Obv we know EWR was an issue)
- Wx issues

-Cardholder spend up 20% YoY

-2026 strong profitability is expected

- Fleetwide installation for first class is planned to be completed by mid spring.

- More upfront Plus seats installed

-New IOS and android apps

-New redesigned website coming out this year

- Focus on increasing commercial to focus on premium offerings

- 766m total liquidity, 560m cash.

- financing for more liquidity approved by year end to improve our 760m to close to 1b

- 13 aircraft deliveries in the next 6 months. 2 in Q3, 11 in Q4.

- Q3 adjusted loss is expected

- Higher than expected Mx costs in Q2 (wonder why...)



Q&As

- Barry, what is your path to positive margins? - Underlying issues, april - tariffs and economy, stabilized, now we are seeing more ATC issues and Wx issues. Mid june, another slow down, cant tell if demand or slowdown for summer. low bookings, but now we are seeing significant growth on sales for july/august. It is actually closer to break even on a month to month basis. Sept alone, F9 is seeing a lot of markets growing and a certain carrier losing seats on those routes. Capacity reductions are there to increase RASM on overcapped routes. Product and loyalty are being focused on, spending is up on cards and the new frontier is actually doing well with customers. Premium offerings are continuing and hopeful that it will increase profitability.

- Cost side, What is your capacity looking like in Q4 and utilization of aircraft along with CASMex? - Tues/wed/sat reductions. driving YoY flat capacity. Hiring is slow and tied to capacity reductions. Most of our aircraft were staggered towards Year end and expect see more flights towards end of the year and Q1 next year.

-How can you flex so much so easily? We sit on a surplus of pilots YoY with the ability to draw up and draw down very easily. Activating our training program to increase capacity will happen when needed. Carrying several points this quarter based on excess pilots and flight attendants. Too many staffed right now due to larger growth plans that fell short. We are not going to be hiring and adding to the problem right now, but we are increasing peak flying with new aircraft deliveries. Long pull on tent to increase growth is training pilots. When we see demand come back, we will start hiring 2 quarters prior to forecast. We are currently not seeing demand come back as much as we would like, so we are sticking to our current staffing levels.

- Load factors are consistently high 80s low 90s the last month and continuing. Revenue per passenger is actually increasing a fair amount and capacity is down, but sales are moving up.

- Better markets than others? -LAS having challenges. Everywhere else is actually doing very well.

- August yield up 5%, september yields up 15%. Which explains our current range of Q3 expectations. Dip in June they didn't expect due to Gaza/israel. Currently in a month to month game. Barry is mostly optimistic of seeing the benefits of capacity issues and competition and capacity/demand will right size soon.

-Domestic capcity losing money? is this ULCC Specific? - Everyone is losing domestic domestically. 2 carriers are subsidizing it heavily with intl travel and codeshares. History shows it will not continue. We have one of the cleanest balance sheets in the industry and there is still a huge opportunity for lowest cost provider. Domestically there are too many narrow bodies for capacity.

- Capacity this year will be flat to down YoY. It will be an unprofitable year, do you think pieces are there to make this model work? or will it require growth? - The model doesn't need growth, it will work better with growth. Prior to the economic issues in Feb, we were up 20% YoY for yields. Since then, it has been up and down each month. We believe domestic flying for everyone is not producing positive margins today. Too much supply compared to demand. Industry will react and right size.

-If we are seeing big improvements in sept/oct, why are we not seeing higher earnings in Q3? Sales were down in June/July actually YoY and Aug/Sept are both strong. We are seeing sales up, mid july until now, sales are up YoY. If these continue, we expect high RASMs in the future and a great rest of the year.

-We are seeing railroad consilidations and mergers. Do you think it is time to revisit M&A? - I do not know - Barry. - If you look in history and we are seeing it, reductions in capacity, we then see consolidation.

-Do you still expect profitable back half? Yes, Year started fantastic, issues in spring, recovered in late spring, then fell in mid june until mid july. We are currently back seeing high sales, to see yields up 15% now is amazing. If they continue, then we will see profits. But this year is currently very volatile.

-Barry, back to load factor, 2nd quarter trended higher. Do you see progression monthly throughout quarter, or was it back half weighted, especially after competitor bag fee policies? - It improved on the back half. Late may/early June we booked to a 94 for the first time in a long time on a non holiday. There is a demand for the product we currently offer. Thew new frontier offering basic, economy and a more premium product are leveling the playing field and increasing demand for our products.

- We are seeing lower utilization with higher demand on peak days and increased flying. Those are cuts to excess capacity that were causing us losses.

- I ask with the most respect. We have seen profitability fare divergence the last 3 years. Tehre is a narrative about trans atlantic. You have an order book and shrinking capacity. Where do you fit in and where do we see these double pre tax margins?- Yeah look, I didnt buy widebodies some years ago and I would love to have them. there are periods where intl is really good and others where low cost performed well and domestic performed well. It has become clear that this model is vindicated, it isn't a model issue, it is a domestic oversupply issue. period. Larger and small carriers will be reducing capacity in the united states full stop. We have the best balance sheets and lowest cost. We expect to be the winner in 2026. It is always dark before the storm. History shows you will not see oversupply for a long period of time.

- I appreciate that answer, but is there a mature travel demand in the US and do you have strategies if it doesnt work? - Moves by others that are precoursers for potential consolidation. There are places we aren't flying. There are places with ULCCs that are untapped and we believe we still have voids in our growth that will be getting better. Everyone is chasing margins and we think we will see a spot to increase our fares soon too.

- Barry, what are the themes on sale leasebacks and competitive issues with that? As prodution increased and there are more transactions to get done, do you see lessors having a better end of the deal instead of the airlines? - Plenty of other airlines who buy what we buy. We are always concerned about seeing issues with sale leasebacks in the future, we stay about 12-24 months infront of the airline and currently dont see a challenge with any sale leasebacks currently. There might be a bank that would flip and help us with financing should we need that instead of sale leasebacks. We stay ahead of everything and have the lowest cost of aircraft ownership in the industry, whatever is needed to achieve that, we will keep it. The current issues are values of end of life aircraft that are nearing 17 or so years.

- You said you could report by month, what is keeping you from disclosing monthly RASM? - it used to be a thing, we have thought about it and it could possibly cause other volatile issues. But we do not want an overreaction up or down. We are cautiously optimistic. We are staring at double digit yields currently and we are hopeful. Finally seeing the industry figured out that 79 is the new 49. We ran a sale and dropped fares, sales stayed the same. $29 fares do not work anymore. You need to increase fares and cannot make up the low prices in volume. As we clean up capacity we will clean up pricing as well.

- Thanks for telling us about domestic market demand. How are you thinking about peak/off peak capacity? We are down on tues/wed, going into fall we plan on 2-3hrs on those days, not quite allegiant levels, but we have seen losses on Tues/wed and in order to cut those losses, we are trying to lower more. It might be too much, but when we can fill aircraft on those days, we will add more. We are going to match capacity to demand and get back to profitability. Flying max on peak days, drawing back on off peak days. We need to find the balance on where it needs to be, might take a few quarters to dial in, we are south of 7-8hrs but north of 3-4 hours. We will likely see about 5hrs in the end. Due to fleet order, we will grow, it will be on peak days and peak parts of year to ensure capacity and cash positive outcomes.

- April was some of the lowest load factors siunce covid. June to now is some of the highest loads we have seen. Those translate in higher yields. We expect to see the benefits in this Q4.

- I get the confidence on your plans, but do you see a world where it takes longer to play out and domestic leisure is down, what do you think? - We are currently to best positioned in the low cost space to weather whatever is going to happen in the next year. We are optimistic.

My takeaways of the call

Moving out of "new capacity markets"
By slowing overall growth rate = RASM growth improves
Spring 2026: "full rollout" of First Class seating
Less capacity in overall industry is expected in the future
Planning on lower utilization on off-peak days
Surplus of Pilots, FA's
No hiring planned
Need to "right size" staffing
Not planning on an improvement of demand for a return to profitability
Gaza violence / middle east conflict impacted June
"Huge opportunity for low cost provider"
Tuesday, Wed flying will be reduced greatly
"you gotta get full to drive yields"

That's about what I got out of it as well except that I did catch that they already have the financing in place for all the orders thru 2026. So the planes are definitely still coming, we just aren't going to fly them very much.

This is like Spirit all over again. I remember Spirit having the “right size” the operation talk a few years ago. More planes coming, but not making money with the planes you have now. First class? Spirit tried various forms of that with this latest rebranding of GoBig.

We (Spirit) have sold 23 planes and own 22 more.

How anyone doesn’t see this as the beginning of the end I don’t know. Furloughs have to be imminent.

That's massively dramatic.

Yeah we lost a little money. We have tons of money in the bank. We were profitable last year. They expect to be double digit profitable next year.

This your first airline?

Not even remotely close.

Hope you got your apps out

This is accurate. If Indigo decides it’s not a good business and leaves, it is def a similar situation like spirit real quick, or even worse. BB gets reallllll sensitive every time Jamie Baker from jpmorgan gets onto him about the sale leasebacks, like in today’s questions answer session for earnings. The banks are real skeptical. A lot of airlines are struggling. The difference with most is they have assets. For more comparable for size… JetBlue, they have a huge asset pool with gates and slots and own a bunch of planes and have roughly 3.8b in liquidity with more to leverage against. Frontier does not have much if anything in assets. Frontier has 700 million in liquidity with just planes slots to sell for lease backs, which the analyst today were all over bb about that market starting to turn and be more in banks hands not the airlines. 70 mill loss with that much in liquidity won’t last forever. It’s not the end of the world right now, but it definitely is not good, which is why stock fell 15% today and investors ran. They are completely skeptical.

To add on to this, there was another caller who really layed into BB about their 3 years of meh/loss and questioned their return to profits and their direction..... He got REALLY defensive, it was towards the end.

Barclays: Hey, good morning everyone. Thanks for taking the question. And Barry, I ask this with the most respect, but I guess it’s been two or three years now where we’ve seen a clear divergence in profitability between those that maybe have transatlantic routes and those that don’t. But there’s a narrative that there’s a structural shift happening. I guess, what’s gonna change looking forward? Because you guys have a huge order book. You’re taking deliveries, yet shrinking capacity. So how do we reconcile the outlook here versus an order book and an industry that needs to shrink? And I guess, where do you fit into that? And how do we hit that ever elusive double digit pretax margin?

BB: Yeah. Look. I I don’t take offense. I mean, I didn’t buy wide bodies ten years ago, and maybe I’d love to have them. But I I think history shows that, you know, there’s there’s periods of time where international is really good.

I go back to late nineties. The legacies were minting money on international. It really helped, really helped. Their corporate was really good, and low cost actually underperformed. You flipped a few years later, well, those fortunes change.

I think what’s become clear, and we actually think the model is now vindicated, is this is not a model issue. If you go look under the hood, this is a domestic oversupply issue, period. And what we now see is that these larger carriers and small, in some cases, competitors will be reducing capacity in The United States. Full stop. And we then, with the lowest costs and one of the cleanest balance sheets, will be a huge beneficiary of that.

And how many times has BB misread the market place?? Several. The one thing you depend on a CEO to understand is the market they are competing in and BB stinks at it

listening to Barry say the legacies were "subsidized by international" is like hearing the CEO of Dennys b1tch that IHOP is subsidized by pancakes, and "without pancakes, IHOP wouldn't be the same"

yes, he is the guy running Frontier, incredible isn't it

when Frontier stops flying on Tuesdays and Wednesdays that should really help open time even more

nice