Frontier Cuts Jobs, Slows Growth
 

This is the 3rd carrier this week.
If ever there was a time to consolidate, now is the time!


DENVER -- Frontier Airlines said Wednesday it is letting go about 100 people amid jet fuel costs that have risen 18 percent since October.
It also said it expected a pre-tax loss of 58 cents to 68 cents per share for its December quarter, excluding special items.
CEO Sean Menke said employees were told Wednesday that the Denver-based carrier was cutting its indirect labor work force by 10 percent. Spokesman Joe Hodas described the jobs as corporate jobs not directly related to flight operations and said the cuts represented 1.4 percent of the total work force.

The layoffs were expected to save Frontier about $5 million on an annualized basis, Menke said.
The airline also plans to scale back how much it expands its available seat miles, an industry unit that factors in the number of seats available and the number of miles flown. It also is evaluating the size of its fleet, Menke said.
The carrier plans to reduce mainline year-over-year growth in available seat miles through the first three months of 2008 from 13.7 percent to 8.6 percent, Menke said.
"In contrast to encouraging year-over-year unit revenue improvements for November and October, the cost of jet fuel has climbed 18 percent since October when we last provided an earnings estimate for the December quarter," Menke said.
Several other airlines have announced plans to slow growth and cut costs to deal with higher fuel prices and the prospect of an economic slowdown that could have people flying less.
Frontier reported record load factors, or occupancy, for November for the sixth straight month. The load factor was 78.1 percent, up from 72.8 percent in November 2006.
Revenue passenger miles, which refers to one paying passenger flown one mile, rose 22.5 percent to 788.8 million.

Agree, its time for consolidation. Too many airlines, too many seats. I flew Delta last tuesday, 757 with 70 pax on board. Every flight might/will be full in December, but after the holidays, wow, red ink all over the place.

I see a couple of mergers coming.

Frontier+Jetblue

Spirit and the "SPIRIT of the west"?
Then we can have some kind of marketing campaign about "TAILS" and "6 inches" and "MILFs".;)

This simply means that there will be more flying for Republic.

Surely this is more the type of consolidation that is probable. I don't necessarily see any of the giants merging - thoughts?

I'm down with that...

ASHED ARE YOU AN EAST, WEST OR CENTRAL STATION?

jetBlue/Virgin is more likely.

what does virgin has that JB wants? 2 gates at SFO? anyone can get gates there. 1 gate at lax?we can get a gate there too. 1 gate in jfk? we have 26.

Frontier has gates in denver, which as of now are a hot commodity. they also have plus 30 buses, virgin has what, 5?

if virgin stays in biz and grows then maybe in 5 years jb/virgin, but not now.