Frontier Airlines has done anything but idle at the gate as the coronavirus pandemic has decimated America’s appetite for air travel.
The Denver-based carrier, known for its low fares, bag fees and animal photos on the tails of its aircraft, has made a flurry of moves in hopes of enticing as many people as possible to board its planes amid the health crisis.
Some, like the airline’s decision to slash all fares by 90% for a limited time in mid-March, which overwhelmed its customer service systems, have encountered more turbulence than others.
This week, Frontier launched perhaps its most ambitious initiative of the crisis yet.
Starting at $39, passengers flying between Friday and Aug. 31 will have the option to buy an empty middle seat, something the airline is calling the “more room” seat assignment. When coupled with the policy to mandate all flyers wear face coverings aboard Frontier aircraft starting Friday, “more room” allows Frontier to offer the “highest levels of passenger well-being and comfort,” according to a news release.
“We continue to see a lot of feedback from customers that say ‘OK, I get it, I see that I’m safe but I’d just like a little more peace of mind,’ so we have offered this product, this guaranteed middle seat open,” Frontier CEO Barry Biffle said.
Biffle pointed to Frontier’s aircraft cleaning efforts — regularly fogging the interior of planes with a disinfectant mist that “kills the virus on contact,” and a mandatory health and safety survey that passengers must fill out before flying — as evidence the airline is doing all it can to ensure passenger safety. In two weeks, the airline plans to start checking the temperatures of everyone boarding planes.
There has been plenty of criticism of the “more room” initiative with some on social media referring to it as a cash grab playing on people’s fears of the deadly COVID-19 virus. Biffle said that his airline and others already are letting people fan out on flights for free when there is space available. Frontier also was looking into this policy before the pandemic hit. The company may keep it beyond Aug. 31 if the demand is there.
“We offer the lowest total prices in the United States. Period. So we are not profiteering off customers at all,” Biffle said. “We don’t know how much real demand there is for this. And it’s a little like a belt and suspenders, because, again, we believe you are safe on Frontier without this.”
“I think it’s a very innovative thing,” Michael Boyd, president of Boyd Group International, an Evergreen-based aviation consulting and forecasting business, said. “That turns an empty butt space into 39 bucks. Hey, can’t beat that.”
But innovation doesn’t mean sustainability.
“If airlines can’t eventually sell the middle seat, we’re not going to have an airport transportation system,” Boyd said.
Frontier isn’t just relying on new sales policies to stay solvent. It has been approved for $200 million in federal payroll support — a $170 million grant and $30 million in loans — about half of which is it has already received, Biffle said. The company is also working on the details of a $498 million loan funded through the CARES Act, according to a spokeswoman.
The bailout money comes as the airline has sought to stop serving 33 markets through June 10. The route suspension requests were born out a lack of demand, Biffle said.
In an April 25 order previously covered by the Denver Business Journal, the U.S. Department of Transportation granted Frontier’s request to stop serving Detroit, Boston, Charlotte, North Carolina and Providence, Rhode Island. The local airport authority for Bloomington, Illinois also granted Frontier permission to stop flying there for a limited time.
Boyd is of the mind that Frontier should have been granted all of its route suspension requests even if the markets didn’t have other carriers to serve them.
“It is outrageous and demonstrably stupid of the DOT to require an airplane to fly when that airplane is empty,” he said.
Biffle is bullish on Frontier’s prospects if the pandemic recedes. The company won’t see the 15% increase in passenger traffic and revenue it was projecting at the beginning of the year, but he is hopeful 2020 could be flat in spite of the crisis. He noted that the airline went from carrying 80,000 passengers a day down to 3,000 in recent months, but over the last few days, he has seen that number creep back up to 10,000.
Passenger throughput at Transportation Security Administration checkpoints around the country has ticked up gradually after cratering in early April. Still, Tuesday’s numbers were down almost 94% compared to May 5, 2019.
“It’s not going to be long before airplanes are full again,” Biffle said. “Our plan is to have our entire fleet back in the air in July and all of our destinations should be served.”
Boyd, the consultant, sees Frontier recovery coming a lot quicker than that of larger legacy carriers such as United Airlines or Delta, thanks to its point-to-point business model and its willingness to fly to places like Jackson, Mississippi, .
“I can’t go to Las Vegas. It’s closed, but if I could, I would bet on Frontier,” he said.
