At long last, Frontier has filed its schedules for summer travel. Last weekend we saw the airline roll its end-of-schedule from May 20 to September 8. This is later than I’d have expected to see that normally, so I figured there were some big changes planned. Maybe I built it up in my head too much, but while there were changes, they were more evolutionary than revolutionary. And much of this feels like going back to a previous plan to serve the big city leisure markets with higher frequency… kind of like Spirit during its heyday.
Frontier, as you recall, realized there was too much capacity in big Florida markets and Las Vegas a couple years back, so it talked about going elsewhere. It used Minneapolis as an example of a mid-size city that could use some Frontier love. It appears Frontier thinks it made a mistake.
Here’s a look at the percentage of flights that touch Florida or Las Vegas in the Frontier system over time.
% of Frontier Flights Touching Las Vegas and/or Florida by Month
Data via Cirium
There was a massive increase in focus during the pandemic, of course, but then it fell off rapidly in 2024. Now? Well this new schedule ramps right back up again. It’s not at 2023 levels, but it’s closer to them than it is to 2024 levels.
This isn’t just about the type of market, but it’s the size and frequency as well. I took a look at all of Frontier’s bases and then grouped flights based on the size of the destination’s Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). Here’s that look:
Frontier July 2026 Change in Flights by Destination from Base vs July 2025
Data via Cirium
You can see it’s the big cities that are growing. In fact, in July 2025, the top 10 MSAs accounted for 35.1 percent of flights (based on destination, again). That jumps to 39.7 percent this July.
This shift into big cities means that Frontier is also going to try to fly more often. Now, a big caveat here… a Frontier-filed schedule for July is not what I would call accurate. I don’t generally trust Frontier’s schedules until the plane takes off. So things can change, but for now, just look at how much frequency has changed year over year.
Frontier Daily Frequency by Route July 2026 vs July 2025
Data via Cirium
Frontier was the master of the 2, 3, or 4 times weekly route. Now that is a tiny fraction of what the airline does. This has to be a play for utilization. After all, in its recent earnings announcement, Frontier said it would return a couple dozen airplanes to lessors and defer new deliveries from later this decade into the next one. At the same time, it’s growing, so that can only mean an increase in utilization for now. In the long run, Frontier expects 10 percent growth per year. So it is shifting its network to be able to fulfill that growth plan.
The growth may be in big destinations, but it’s not happening in ALL destinations. There are very clear winners and losers among the largest cities. New York, for example, gets slashed. LaGuardia loses Charlotte, Cleveland, Denver, and Raleigh/Durham. (Denver is the only surprise.) That leaves just Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth, and Orlando. JFK sheds Dallas/Fort Worth, Miami, Tampa, and… Los Angeles. That last one never made sense to me with those insane airport costs on both ends.
But while New York takes a hit, Los Angeles is actually growing. In Los Angeles, the main area of growth is in frequency. Now every route has 1x daily this summer or more with the exception of Portland (OR) at 5x weekly. Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, and Las Vegas are 2x daily. San Jose rejoins the route map from LAX, and JFK is the only route that goes away.
We can also look at this from a base perspective — Frontier has 13 of them — and I think that shines some light on the airline’s priorities.
Frontier Departures by Base
Data via Cirium
There is one thing that stands out above all. Atlanta. Frontier made a big move in Atlanta once Southwest shifted its focus from there to Nashville. And Frontier continues to really, really like what it sees. It is by far the airline’s largest station this summer. This is a massive growth engine for Frontier, and it desperately needed to find one. The question is… is it doing well for Frontier or is it just better than the other places where it could put its airplanes?
Orlando and Las Vegas also had big surges as we talked about above, but Denver? No. Denver is basically flat, actually flights are a little down. It’s still the airline’s second-largest station, but that may be a temporary status if these trends continue. Growth opportunities are elsewhere, and Frontier has been gutting some of those secondary western markets that would normally power Denver. For example, Boise, Green Bay, Missoula, Palm Springs, Seattle/Paine Field, Spokane, and Tucson are all gone from the network. That hits Denver, but Denver also is shedding larger more surprising markets.
This summer, there will be no flights from Denver to Baltimore, Buffalo, Burbank, Chicago/O’Hare and Midway, Los Cabos, Milwaukee, New York/LaGuardia, PIttsburgh, Puerto Vallarta, Reno, and San Jose even though they existed last year. This is mostly a replacement effort. In the West, Las Vegas gains connectivity to some of these markets like Burbank that were Denver-only last year. In the East, they go to Atlanta now.
While the big bases grow, the smaller ones stagnate or shrink. Nothing got pummeled harder than Cincinnati which you have to imagine might find its base status in danger with flights that only operate to other bases (plus 3x weekly Fort Myers).
This is a long way of saying… Florida and Vegas are back, baby. What’s old is new again, though the only thing that’s really new is Atlanta. Everything else looks like it’s just a pivot back toward what worked for at least one ULCC in the old days.
For a more in-depth discussion, come listen to this week’s The Air Show podcast which went live this morning.
