Prior to April, 2008 Frontier was an amazing place to work. When you met someone and said you worked at Frontier, the near universal response was "I love Frontier." Not like, but love. I was taken aback, having been raised in a legacy family and having worked for a craptastic regional, that never happened. You might hear a story about how that legacy smashed their luggage, or marooned grandma, but never that they "loved" the airline in question.
This warm niche in the Denver market meant that employees were actually proud to wear stuff from the company store, to put a "Whole Different Animal" license plate frame on the hoopty, etc. An employee could, in good conscience, ask or suggest that a friend fly Frontier because we knew they would be treated well and would get to their destination in a timely fashion. All this was possible because of the fantastic operation we ran, and and the general surfeit of surly employees.
There was usually an operational spare, so a flight cancellation seemed less likely than Haley's comet crusing past. With minimal operational problems, the agents were actually and usually nice. Ongoing hiring kept the FA ranks fresh, and diluted the bitter cat-herder ranks. In house maintenance, from adding oil to C-checks, meant there was alot of pride invested in every machine. An aircraft would come out of a heavy check not only working, but darn near glimmering, inside and out. Mechs took so much ownership of these birds that one guy threw a chock into a running engine to prevent its unairworthy (in his mind) departure. Overboard, yes, but in a world where nobody cares, clearly he cared. The wheelchair pushers (also in house, English-speaking Frontier employees compared to the off-the-boat Somalis from the contract vendor) probably made a pittance, but one day I overheard a pair of them engaged in a deep, financially literate discussion of FRNT stock's peformance over the last year. My jaw dropped. The organization was still small enough that you kinda knew most folks. Captain's hugging station managers was curiously common.
The pilot group was full of folks that really wanted to work here. The miscreants had largely been weeded out after a few purges, and those that remained made an FO's life peachy. We liked each other and liked coming to work. When some new guidance regarding fuel management came down, adoption was near instantaneous and universal. The implementation of these fuel saving suggestions was optional on any given leg, so imagine my surprise at the lockstep compliance of these 700 guys. All pilots and pilot groups take pride in their work. This group really stretched day in and day out to save a few pennies, to retain a few customers, and to keep other workgroups smiling. The Frontier/FAPA relationship was amicable, but not conspiritorial. The contracts kept making progress, yet negotiatations never had to go the brink. When a scheduling pratice was found to be fatiguing it just got fixed. Though ridiculous, a pilot organized that "Save the Animals" rally downtown that garnered lots of free publicity. When FAPA printed a clever historical knockoff "Fly Frontier" sticker, they had to commission a second run to keep up with demand. Rampers were putting them on tugs, managers were putting them on their cars, heck, I've seen that sticker on the GSE of other airlines! When a sticker with the FAPA logo in the corner is applied to scores of cars in the corporate headquarters parking lot, a very special dynamic is at work.
A great bunch of pilots, doing really great work, and able to do so in an environment of moderately enlightened management. No panacea, we didn't cure world hunger, but yeah, it was a really good culture.
