Too Much Florida And Vegas? Frontier Targets Rivals’ Hubs With $19 Fares

Frontier Airlines CEO Barry Biffle agrees with all the experts, including the bigger airlines’ executives, who say there is too much low-fare capacity in leisure markets. That’s why he is moving capacity into the bigger airlines’ hubs.

On Tuesday, Frontier announced about 50 new flights, mostly from other carriers’ hubs including Charlotte, Dallas, Los Angeles and Minneapolis. New Frontier flights will fly in hub-to-hub markets such as American’s Charlotte-Dallas, Delta’s Atlanta-Minneapolis on Delta and United’s Chicago-Denver.

Dallas gets 14 new Frontier routes; Charlotte gets seven and San Juan, P.R. gets eight. Raleigh-Durham gets six; Los Angeles and Minneapolis get five each and Chicago O’Hare and San Francisco get four.

Asked about the appeal of competitors’ hubs, Biffle said, “I don’t know that we are chasing other people’s hubs, but there is definitely a shift for us from leisure markets in the U.S., which have gotten oversupplied by everyone. We are pivoting and leaving overcapacity places and going into places where fares are higher. We are concentrating on growth markets.”

Frontier capacity in Las Vegas and Orlando will be about 20% this fall, down from about a third in the summer of 2023. “If you go back to pre-Covid, it was cheap to go to Florida and Las Vegas and but not cheap to go everywhere else,” Biffle said Tuesday in an interview.

Frontier has about 600 daily departures. To add 50 new routes, “We took some (capacity) from Orlando and others from growth – reallocation plus new aircraft,” Biffle said. Frontier operates a fleet of about 135 Airbus A320 family aircraft. It does not operate Boeing
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aircraft. “Sometimes you get lucky,” Biffle said.

Frontier’s capacity addresses an issue articulated by Andrew Nocella, United Airlines chief commercial officer, on United’s October earnings call. “There are only so many seats Florida, Cancun or Vegas can support in such a short period of time,” Nocella said, referring to the third quarter.

Frontier’s new offerings come with low introductory fares. In Charlotte, for instance, the carrier will offer introductory $19 fares on flights to Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago, Dallas, Houston and New York LaGuardia. Most flights will begin in April with Buffalo starting in May and San Juan, Puerto Rico starting in June. San Juan will have a $69 introductory fare.

“In Charlotte, we are looking to pivot to overpriced markets,” Biffle said. Asked about the Charlotte- Dallas route, a hub-to-hub route for American, Biffle said, “If you look at prices, $19 will be pretty attractive in Charlotte-Dallas.”

The new flights will give Frontier 13 Charlotte destinations, second only to American, which has about 160 destinations from Charlotte. However, while American offers multiple daily departures to most destinations, Frontier will offer, at most, single daily departures. Of the new routes, Baltimore, LaGuardia and San Juan will have daily service. Buffalo, Chicago, Dallas and Houston will operate three times a week.

From Charlotte, the carrier already serves Cleveland, Denver, Las Vegas, Orlando, Philadelphia and Trenton. With the addition of the new cities, Frontier will surpass Southwest and Delta, which each have seven destinations from Charlotte.