Wow, two of the worst airlines merging (Denver: movie theater, safe)

[hikernut]

Originally Posted by Mike from back east

"A few years ago, I witnessed THE most Amurikan vision ever - about 150 people boarding an Allegiant flight to Florida. Almost every single person was morbidly obese,

I hope the pilots factor that into their fuel calculations

[Willy702]

You can look at the positive side of it and note that a Colorado company with under 6,000 employees is taking majority control of a Florida company with almost 9,000 employees, with very few based in Colorado. From a Colorado perspective this should be very positive with more jobs and protections on the routes flying out of DEN.

The complaints about Frontier and Spirit used to be deserved, but these days both cleaned up their acts quite a bit. A decade ago Spirit had a CEO who was almost proud of how horrible they were, saying customers didn't care about service or being on time if they got a cheap flight. Once Frontier went after the Spirit market with the same business model there was a definite change. Neither is the best out there but they aren't way behind any longer.

[davebarnes]

Thankfully, I will never fly FrontSpirit.
I will not travel if I cannot book a business/first class seat.
Even for a short hop.

[Rogarven]

So sorry to hear about this merger. Only time I ever booked a flight on Frontier was in '08 to Minne. - St Paul. Of course, that was before the "new look' at Frontier. It was very pleasant with TV screen and on time flights. I have heard nothing good about Spirit and the "new " Frontier.

[BarryK123]

Originally Posted by davebarnes

Thankfully, I will never fly FrontSpirit.
I will not travel if I cannot book a business/first class seat.
Even for a short hop.

Agree and I do the same.

And Dave, you omitted Allegiant from your no-fly list - another POS airline.

[rogers719]

I have flown frontier multiple times and never noticed any problems. Granted I could not care less about “service” on an airplane. Delta, American, etc have not provided me with anything that really justifies higher cost. The one time I did have to cancel, frontier was easy to deal with and gave me flight credit for anytime in the next 12 months.

[Spot]

Originally Posted by Jimrob1

I hope the merger will be successful. I've never flown on Sprit. Frontier I have flown 4 times. I don't care about the level of service. The price is what I'm interested in. To me flying is just a way to get from A to B. I have never understood why people get so upset about the service on a plane. It's just a few hours or whatever. Get on the plane and get off at your destination.

Because the airlines have the worst customer service of any private business, except maybe the cable companies. I think people are just tired of paying a lot of money to companies that treat them like garbage.

[dcfas]

The topic caught my eye and interest, but I’m not from Colorado. Here we have Southwest and Jetblue, both less expensive, usually, than the bigger, legacy airlines. I’m not even sure that’s the case anymore as I think they have been very successful. The issue is the cost to fly from upstate NY to Florida, for example, can be a killer. I plan ahead and get on the computer at 5AM and hover my finger over the keyboard in anticipation of when they open up the flights for booking at the lower prices. Even so, during a school vacation week it’s shocking how much it costs for a round trip.

Allegiant is our low cost version of Frontier/Spirit. Southwest during April school break for Albany to Orlando is over 600 one-way. Allegiant is in the 300+ range (Orlando/Sanford). These are standard flights, not the earlier discounted flights that sell out within an hour.

[Mike from back east]

Originally Posted by Spot

I think people are just tired of paying a lot of money to companies that treat them like garbage.

Having been in the transport business most of my career I would revise your remark as follow: "people are just tired of paying a lot of money to companies that treat them like packages on FEDEX."

My revision recognizes that the commercial passenger aviation industry treats us like packages at FEDEX where people/boxes are flown to a hub city, sorted, and then flown to a destination city. Though there are still many direct city-pair flights without changing planes, the FEDEX "hub/spoke" model has been widely adopted to make sure that as many planes as possible always fly as full as possible and using the fewest aircraft and crews to achieve it. With fare wars for decades they have to make sure they only fly the minimum number of planes/crews.

At their hubs, they usually have a spare plane available in case they need one; but rarely have a spare plane at non-hub airports. That's how Eastern Airlines used to run their hourly NYC-DC shuttle, they had planes sitting in those airports to press into immediate service if a gaggle of last minute flyers showed up and the regularly scheduled plane was full; they'd just roll out the plane that was due to leave the next hour and put it at the gate.


IIRC we did fly Spirit one time, out of Denver, I think, probably ten years ago, going back east for the two things I only go back east for -- funerals and Baltimore crab cakes. I liked that for a mere $25 extra I could upgrade to a first-class type of roomy seat at the front of the plane, and I liked picking my seat assignment on-line, in advance, unlike the cattle car experience of lining up for the mad dash. But that was a good ten years ago and I suspect things have gone downhill since.

[Klassyhk]

Originally Posted by BarryK123

Frontier and Spirit. Reminds me of the saying about flies being attracted to sh*t. Now all they need for the trifecta is Media/IT by Comcast!

I can at least stomach Frontier but Spirit...is beyond the beyonds. I'm shocked that Spirit remained in business long enough to merge with anyone.