Frontier is in the middle of making huge changes to its business model, and that is not easy to do. Anytime you make a big shift, you anger those who liked the way things were before. Frontier is learning this firsthand right now as some Denver loyalists from years past are grumbling.

Just a few years ago, Frontier was a traditional type of airline with a little Rocky Mountain flavor to it. The airline had a traditional hub-and-spoke system, but it offered great amenities like in-seat television (which it still has for a fee) and extra legroom for all seats. The operation was centered around Denver and locals treated it like the hometown airline. Frontier looks different these days and the transition isn’t done.

I wrote about this last August and pointed to Frontier’s transformation. Here’s how the route map looks today:

What’s changed? Well, Trenton is now the airline’s second largest airport and Wilmington is starting up on the other side of Philly as well. Meanwhile, the Denver operation continues to shift toward smaller cities with less frequency and less competition. For example, Frontier was running a multi-daily schedule to Sacramento, but now it’s no longer there. Nearby, however, there are now 3 weekly flights to Fresno.

Naturally, sub-daily flights to a small city serve a very different purpose than multi-daily flights to a big city. They appeal much more to the leisure traveler than to the business traveler. So Frontier is changing how it operates, and part of that starts with how it sells tickets.

It’s clear that a lot of the airline’s traffic still comes from third party online and offline travel agents, and that is expensive for the airline. For that reason, Frontier is now making a huge push to change that. It has come up with a creative way to penalize those who book through third parties. Those who book direct get free carry-ons, full mileage credit, and free advanced seat assignment. Those who book through online travel agents don’t. It’s even painting its website on the side of its airplanes to get the point across – book direct with the airline.

Now technically, traditional travel agents can still book all the various fare families but it is clunky and requires forcing the fare in the global distribution system. People used to the old way of working with Frontier aren’t happy about that, and they’re really not happy that Frontier is telling people that booking with travel agents will get the fewer amenities than booking direct. You see a lot of talk like this from the article linked above:

“It is the biggest slap in the face to me,” said Donna Evans, another Andavo Travel affiliate based in Denver who booked an economy ticket and selected a seat for a client on Frontier using her GDS this week.

But what these travel agents don’t realize is that this is not your father’s Frontier. (Or, well, even your older brother’s Frontier for that matter.) The airline is going to continue to push more toward fewer flights to smaller cities. Even in bigger cities, it doesn’t have nearly as many flights as it used to. Look at Denver to LA, for example. Five years ago, it flew up to 7 flights a day. Now it has 4 flights on the busiest days, the same number as American. United has 7.

The bottom line is that Frontier is moving away from the business traveler’s schedule and is going to let United and Southwest fight for that in Denver. Instead, it will focus on a more profitable niche opportunity. The tricky part is that while the airline transitions, it still needs support of the travel agents in Denver. But those travel agents have to see the writing on the wall.

The biggest changes may be yet to come. Current owner Republic expects to sell the airline very soon. In the last earnings call, it was said the sale was expected to happen by July. Last we heard, the two most interested parties were also behind Spirit’s rise to ultra low cost carrier status – Indigo Partners and Anchorage Capital.

Remember when Spirit was a dinky little airline based in Detroit losing money? My how that has changed. If this change in ownership happens, more capital would flow into the airline and that will fund more rapid change. I bet we see more of the traditional Denver flying disappear in favor of other less frequent, more unique opportunities. And it’s not just flying that Denver could lose.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the airline even considered moving its headquarters elsewhere. After all, Denver is no longer the center of the universe for the airline. The mindset at the airline now is that low costs matter. And if management can find a cheaper place to base, I bet they would move. That’s the kind of airline Frontier is now.

In a couple years, I’d bet the Frontier that people remember from years past will be mostly just a memory. The Frontier of the future is one that focuses on keeping costs low in every way possible. At the same time, the airline will move into more alternate airports and smaller markets where it can be successful. Denver will be a part of it, but not in the same way people might still expect today.

The 787 Dreamliner Is Back: Where and When You Can Fly on One – Conde Nast Daily Traveler
Here’s a roundup of when the 787 will be going back into service with various airlines.

In the Trenches: The Virtual Phone System Scramble – Intuit Small Business Blog
Our phone system provider decided to upgrade the system, causing us big problems in the process.

Frontier is Adding Fees, But It’s Really Easy to Avoid Many of Them – Conde Nast Daily Traveler
Frontier continues to make fares less valuable when booked through the third parties. It’s just really easy to avoid that problem.

Top 50 Travel Blogs – Cision Blog
According to Cision’s influence rating, this blog is #6 on the list of top travel blogs.

Back in the day, Southwest was known for using a bracketing strategy around big cities. For example, it served Manchester to get the northern half of Boston and Providence to get the southern half. It did the same in Chicago with Midway and Milwaukee. That strategy disappeared when Southwest started moving into big cities directly, but Frontier apparently likes the plan and is now trying the same thing in Philadelphia.

Frontier recently decided to build up a good little operation in Trenton. Now, it is going to start flying into Wilmington, Delaware. This is the first commercial service to Delaware since Delta pulled out a few years back.

Starting July 1, Frontier will begin flying from Wilmington to 5 cities:

• Chicago/Midway – 3x per week
• Denver – 4x per week
• Houston/Intercontinental – 3x per week
• Orlando – 2x per week
• Tampa – 2x per week

Is this a good idea? It very well could be. Traditional airlines don’t fly to Wilmington because of just how close it is to Philly. It’s only 26 miles down I-95 from the Philly Airport. Since the other airlines already have good service to Philly, Wilmington would only make sense if it could generate a premium on small airplanes with lower frequencies. It hasn’t worked out yet.

But Frontier wants it for the opposite reason. It cut Philly completely last year when it continued to remake its network as an ultra low cost carrier. Now it has low fares and infrequent flights out of Trenton on the north side of Philly and it wants to do the same out of Wilmington in the south.

For Frontier, Wilmington might just work because people will travel for measurably lower fares. But right now, there are people around Wilmington who already travel for any fare… to Philly. So you can now look at people living in the southern part of Philly, northern Delaware, and northeast Maryland as potential targets to use the service.

Northeast Maryland? Surely they just drive to Baltimore and fly Southwest from there, right? Well, a lot do but remember, Southwest isn’t that cheap anymore. This target market is more likely looking to Baltimore or Philly in order to fly Spirit these days. For those who find Wilmington more convenient, this will be an easy choice. But even for those who don’t prefer Wilmington, they may still make the trip, because Spirit doesn’t serve any of these cities nonstop from Philly or Baltimore.

Even if they did, there might be room for both airlines to offer ultra low fares in an area packed with population. And hey, maybe they’ll end up being one airline in the end anyway. After all, Indigo Partners and Anchorage Capital are both apparently in the running to take over Frontier. Those names sound familiar? They’ve both been involved with Spirit.

As the government continues to fail to do anything about the sequester cuts, the time has come to start closing control towers this weekend. Though these are mostly smaller airports, there are some with commercial service. I haven’t heard anything about airlines walking away just because the tower is closing. For example, Frontier is going to keep operating in Trenton. Does this make you nervous at all?

(Personally, I have no concerns. Airplanes operate at less busy airports without a tower all the time. They just use radio frequencies to coordinate. Close the tower at JFK? I think I’ll pass.)

For years, you could hear Frontier employees talk as if they were part of one big family. It was that level of care that often brought the airline praise from frequent fliers. It also helped create Frontier’s image as Denver’s hometown airline.

But while the name on the airplane and the animals on the tail may still exist, the core of the airline is a lot different than it used to be. And now we’re seeing the results of that change in the form of a decision to outsource all airport staff except in its Denver hub. This is a sad change, but it really is the right thing for the airline to be doing today. I hate to say it, but it’s true.

One Frontier employee who will soon be out of a job sent me an internal memo with details of what’s happening. Of course, many smaller Frontier stations are already outsourced but now the rest, save Denver, will join in.

The first group of stations that will go through this transition to outsourcing will be Dallas, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and St. Louis, which will transition to vendor services by the end of April. The second group will be Albuquerque, Omaha, Orange County, and San Diego, which will transition to vendor services this summer.

Some of these seem like very clear moves. I mean, Frontier has 2 flights a day in Albuquerque. It’s hard to justify having your own staff in a small station like that. Third party contractors that can handle flights for several carriers throughout the day are much better equipped to run that operation.

In fact, I don’t think any of these stations have more than 5 flights a day anymore. I doubt there are more than a couple of stations at all where Frontier has more than 5 flights a day. There used to be more in bigger cities, sure, but Frontier has changed a lot since those days.

A Different Animal
The reality is that Frontier used to be a full service-style airline. It even used to have 34 inches of seat pitch giving it a JetBlue-esque feel. And Denver was the focus of everything. But in the end, that model didn’t make money and things had to change. The legroom went away. Or shall I say, it went away across the board. Now you can pay more for it in a smaller area up front. The nature of the operation changed as well. You started hearing the airline call itself an Ultra Low Cost Carrier (ULCC) the way Allegiant and Spirit style themselves.

Denver and its insane three-way competition proved to be a liability. Frequent flights to the traditional big cities were cut while smaller cities started to receive sub-daily flights. Places like Knoxville, Harrisburg, Minot, and more found themselves with a few flights a week to Denver. And then the focus went outside Denver. Orlando has a decent operation. There are also a lot of flights in partnership with Apple Vacations down to Mexico and the Caribbean from across middle America. And most recently, Trenton has become a big focus.

It appears that Frontier is trying to be a ULCC with good customer service and friendly policies. That would be a welcome differentiator. And you might think that the loyal employees who have worked at the airline for years would be a good way to provide that customer service. But in the end, if you want to be a ULCC, you need to get your costs down further. If Frontier trains its contractors well, it can still provide solid customer service. Heck, it wouldn’t surprise me to see some of the same people who work for Frontier today end up working for the contractor. But those people will also be able to work for other airlines under that contractor and it will mean greater efficiency.

Yes, this is sad for everyone who loved Frontier for what it used to be. But it’s a wake up call to remind people that this isn’t the same Frontier anymore. It’s a different airline; a ULCC. And it’s going to mean changes like this are inevitable. I hate to say it’s the right thing to do for Frontier, but considering what it is trying to be, it does make sense.