dracir1

Denver is just practice for when they do it at IAH w/ the old SWA gates. IAH makes more sense for it.

dracir1

So, we need to solve 3 problems - all at the same time.

Better customer service - this can only be accomplished w/ money. Shouldn't take too much though. It's really some light reprogramming of the app to schedule seats at time of ticket purchase and better/friendlier/more capable CS gate agents and wheelchair services. I can imagine there are a pile of stats that indicate most of the time taken during the boarding/deplaining process can be traced back to gate agents trying to assign/adjust passenger seats, extended cleaning times and waiting on wheelchairs. Up till now, I think the sentiment has been to BLAME the CS agents for not being better and to throw incentives at them to get them to work harder. We've seen this fail miserably - the gate agents are asked to do too much. And the wheelchair contract is hit or miss. Quite frankly I still don't understand the need to send "specials" report from the plane to base operations when the information obtained to send the report came from the previous station. The departed STATION should send the # of wheelchairs at time of departure so the landing station has more time to request from the wheelchair contractors. Any in-range report sent from the plane should just indicate the time of intended landing - the gate to be landed at should already be known (but I digress).

Wifi and better seating for bundlers - big front seats (like Spirit) and wifi (like the rest of the industry). Can't possibly figure how any airline leadership didn't see the eventual need for this way back in 2015 or before. Almost like the need for HF radios instead of flying AROUND the WAT airspace for years (again, I digress).

More redundancy within the network - I'm sure a fair amount of customer complaints stem from having to wait 2-3 days for the next flight when the ONE flight they are booked on cancels. This is simply a networking issue that should be changed. To do so, we need more gates/slot times. There shouldn't be ANY destination in the system that we either don't fly to at least once a day OR if we do skip a day, we fly to them twice on the days we do go there (and at most we only skip 1 day). No more of this flying to some austere destination (that's probably already serviced by essential air service) 3x a week. Either abandon those places or fly there more (based on demand). This might go well with switching to more 2 day schedules - hotels in smaller cities like JAX, IND, PIT, etc. are probably cheaper than long hotels in JFK, EWR, etc. This is a win-win for crews as a mostly turns AND 2 day schedule does offer some ability for crews to overnight (and break the monotony). More digression...

Honestly, merging w/ Spirit would help take care of the last 2 issues. But, the company can't be called Spirit or Frontier anymore (too much bad blood). It would need a new name. And a new paint scheme (although I have to admit I kinda like the animal theme).

How about Zoo airlines? Kinda fits doesn't it...

jerryleber

Hub and spoke carriers have huge potential revenue advantages over point to point carriers especially as the best point to point markets mature. The legacy carriers were grossly mismanged for decades after deregulation. Now they have consolidated and are far better managed and have matched the LCC product with basic economy and no change fees. It seems Ryanair is seeing a similar issues in Europe. Time will tell.

ReserveCA

it all makes "sense" BUT.........
ownership and management will NEVER willingly give up a penny as long as the operation is kind of working.

spooldup

Guess we will see what happens. It is still impressing me that we have better performance than last summer.

FriendlyPilot

There is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding about how this works. Legacies make their money from flying passengers who pay for tickets. Yes, sometimes people trade in miles to fly for "free" but those points they buy are bought with actual money, and they spend that for tickets. United's $1.8B profit was from flying passengers. Some of the money came from direct purchases and some from points they purchased or earned with their credit cards. Whether it was the passenger buying themselves a ticket, their company buying them a ticket or Chase paying for their tickets, the money is all from flying.

To think that majors don't make money, its just all from the credit cards isn't true at all.

LibertyBiberty

100%. Credit cards only make extra revenue for the legacies because the banks have to buy the miles from the airline. It just so happens more people with travel cards what to fly on a legacy than with us.

dracir1

I think the point is that it's not "kind of working" as well as expected (as compared to others).

dracir1

Air Canada just posted 16.6% margin for Q2.

AutoBrksMedium

So, "excess capacity" is similar to Jax Center and weather being the bane of our existence when in reality that term is just fancy, bean counter language for "Frontier can't sell their own product." I figured as much.