If frontier can increase ancillary revenue and continue to cut costs, it is likely they will survive on their own as stand alone airline. The SEC fillings are very misleading and make F9 look like a total money pit, however most of F9s losses are a direct result of the deadweight from YX and RAHs spare/excess aircraft.

It appears the usage of regional aircraft(not including 190s) has been counter productive to F9s LCC business model which has been going on for roughly ten years now.

It appears F9 will be finally getting rid of all 135/145s and Qs by the end of the year along with A318s and other unprofitable routes resulting in a dramatic reduction of their CASM(excluding fuel). F9 already has lower costs than WN.

 

In BB letter today he eluded to the future flying for Frontier.

" we believe the operating losses on the remaining ERJs and E190 in service at Frontier and the grounded RJs will more than offset the profits of our fixed fee flying. Of course this transfer of risk between the business segments does not affect the consolidated result, but it does mean that Republic will have to reconsider how much flying it may want to continue to perform under the Frontier codesharing relationship."

 

Correction: F9 already has substantially lower costs than WN.

 

And yet, you still can't make money.

 

BB and his minions can whip balance sheets against each other as easily as he whip saws the pilot groups.

 

Frontier can make money, and is from their A319/A320 operations. Unfortunately, Frontier is strapped with a significant amount of dead weight primarily from Chautauqua and former Midwest routes. The success and growth of Southwest over the years while Frontier has struggled, proves the use of regional jets by LCCs is counter productive and a flawed business model.

The use of E190s by LCCs is debatable whether they make economic sense.

 

There is a simple solution:

1.) Seperate and sell Frontier Airlines (let them live or die on their own).
2.) Sell the E190s (nobody to fly them for except Frontier, and Frontier doesn't want/need the labor issues or culture dilution).

 

Yup. It sucks to compete in a market currently being "nuked" by a cash rich airline with a penchant for predatory pricing practices.

Nobody is profitable in DEN right now, but amazingly, Frontier is about as close as you can get. "Close" only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

DEN is essentially a battle of attrition being waged by our friends at LUV. The only real hope for F9 is to fight the fight as long as possible and use whatever methods possible to improve their balance sheet in an effort to prolong the battle and inflate LUVs cost to win DEN. At some point, LUV may decide to adjust their DEN strategy and align their fares to more closely reflect those in every other market they fly.

It's really up to LUV as to how long they want to keep strangling. So far, F9 has held on a hell of a lot longer than they probably ever expected. If they desire to spend a few hundred million additional dollars and another year or so, then they will probably get what they want.

 

except when AMR starts out sourcing Eagle's flying...

 

Imagine how profitable we'd be if they did that! By my math, we'd be making something on the order of $100,000,000 to $300,000,000 per year in profit if that happened. Southwest is walking a fine line between having us destroy them in the marketplace and facing legal action for predatory pricing. In that light, I suppose I don't blame them for doing the very thing that they were so successful at combating in their early days.