Here's some Buisness of a possible future for Frontier.
http://www.bizjournals.com/mobile/milwaukee/blog/2011/11/airline-consultant-jetblue-long-shot.html
Airline consultant: JetBlue long-shot suitor for Frontier
Frontier Airlines may go up for sale, so says the CEO of its parent company, Republic Airways Holdings Inc.
But who might want to buy the airline, which has a main hub at Milwaukee’s General Mitchell International Airport?
Shorewood airline consultant Jay Sorensen, president of IdeaWorks, is blunt in saying that he doesn’t think there will be much interest in Frontier. However, he did bring up the possibility of JetBlue Airways, which has its base at JFK International Airport in New York City but doesn’t currently serve the Milwaukee market.
JetBlue’s growth at its home airport is constrained due to a lack of available landing slots, said Sorensen.
“They can’t grow there,” he said.
JetBlue could be interested in purchasing Frontier as a way of expanding into Milwaukee and Kansas City, where Frontier operates a secondary hub, Sorensen said. JetBlue also could find Frontier attractive because they have similar fleets of Airbus aircraft, he said.
“It’s a reach,” said Sorensen, a former executive of Midwest Airlines, which had been based in Oak Creek. Republic acquired Frontier and Midwest in 2009 and merged the airlines under the Frontier brand.
JetBlue management didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment.
The challenge in selling Frontier stems from the intense competition in Denver, where the airline has a loyal following but is forced to compete with legacy carrier United Airlines and Southwest Airlines, the nation’s largest discount carrier.
“Whoever might buy the airline may only do so to reduce competition or because they find some value in the pieces that are left,” he said.
Republic took a gamble in attempting to operate its own airlines, Sorensen added.
Republic wants to sell Frontier so that it can return to its traditional business model — flying regional jets under separate names for legacy air carriers.
“They have a viable operation around contract flying,” Sorensen said. “That is now what they must retrench to.”
As it looks to sell Frontier, Republic plans to take more steps to make the airline more profitable, including selling some of the landing slots it has at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
This drew strong criticism from Sorensen.
“That’s like burning furniture to heat the house.”
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