Things in the Sky

Earlier this month, Republic Airways Holdings announced that it had inked a deal to operate eight Embraer 170 aircraft for Delta Connection later this year, a move that builds on an existing partnership between the two companies. Republic subsidiaries Shuttle America and Chautauqua Airlines operate Embraer 175s and 145s, respectively, under the Delta Connection banner.

These eight E170s are currently in service with Republic’s branded business, Frontier Airlines. I was intrigued that the news release announcing the deal mentioned that the E170 flying would be replaced with Embraer 145 regional jets and Bombardier Q400s. I was interested in how permanent the move was, and fortunately I was able to speak with Daniel Shurz, Republic’s Vice President of Strategy and Planning a couple of weeks ago to discuss the changes.

The A319 makes up the largest part of Frontier’s fleet. Photo credit: Jay Bowie.

Daniel told me that in the past Frontier had “laid out a fleet vision that already had the 170s leaving the Frontier business over the course of the two years from summer 2011 through spring 2013.”

“In an ideal world you’d have everything match up” in terms of aircraft leaving and entering the fleet, but Frontier was not “likely to end up with that scenario,” said Daniel. “What we’re doing essentially is sending 170s to Delta earlier than 190s arrive as new delivery aircraft. Our first new delivery of a 190 is scheduled for August of this year under the agreement we have with Embraer.”

Republic announced this past summer that it would acquire 24 new E-Jets from the middle of this year for its branded service. So far all of the aircraft being delivered will be E190s, though Republic has the option to convert these orders to E195s if it desires.

So, how is Frontier adjusting in the interim? As Republic announced, there will be additional E145 and Q400 flying, but Daniel also told me that Frontier has “temporarily extend the operation of two of our 318s through the summer as well.”

When it comes down to the details, Frontier “will have three scheduled lines of Q400 flying, three additional scheduled lines of 145 flying, and two additional lines of 318 flying replacing eight lines of 170s going to Delta,” Daniel said, adding that “it’s pretty close to a one-for-one replacement.”

Daniel did mention, however that one of the Q400 aircraft “is essentially dedicated to Aspen and that wouldn’t have been operated if the Q400s weren’t in the schedule,” so essentially Frontier has “replaced eight airplanes with seven airplanes.”

All of the additional E145 flying will be out of Frontier’s Milwaukee hub, and will be reduced as E190s are delivered. According to Daniel, Frontier has yet to decide if the additional E190s or remaining E170s will then be moved to Milwaukee.

Meanwhile, Frontier still plans to remove all E170s from branded service by the summer of 2013, and expects to remove the last Airbus A318 from its fleet by the end of this year.

I was also interested to ask Daniel about some of the more longer-term changes in Frontier’s fleet, especially the Bombardier CSeries 300. Republic became the North American launch customer of the type when it announced an order for the type nearly one year ago. Republic is currently slated to receive its first CS300 in the second quarter of 2015.

I was interested in how the CS300 will fit into Frontier’s fleet, as it’s just about the size of Frontier’s A319 aircraft, though the airline has also been growing its fleet of larger A320s. Daniel said that “the CS300 is fundamentally a 319 replacement.” He added that the aircraft is “too small to be a 320 replacement in one sense,” but “we obviously expect significantly reduced operating costs on the CS300 compared to today’s Airbus narrowbodies. You could make an argument that you could get by with just the CSeries.” Even though the aircraft is smaller than the A320, an airline could “take advantage of lower operating costs to run higher frequencies in some cases,” said Daniel.

I was also interested in some of Frontier’s recent Airbus moves. The majority of its upcoming new aircraft are A320s, but it is also taking on three ex-Mexicana A319s as well. Daniel said “it’s likely our new lease acquisitions will be 320s.”

Daniel provided additional background on the A319 aircraft, saying that “when Mexicana collapsed, we were lucky on timing… The lessor in question had a strong incentive to get the airplanes back into service so we found ourselves with reasonably attractive pricing.”

“What we’re finding in general in the new aircraft market is that the 319 and 320 lease prices are not that different. The unit cost of the 320 is clearly superior, so we’re taking advantage of the fact that we wanted to grow the 320 fleet,” said Daniel.

Many thanks to Daniel for being willing to spend some time with me, and to Frontier’s PR department for arranging the interview.

Republic is set to hold its fourth quarter earnings call on Wednesday, so it will be interesting to see if any interesting announcements come out of that.

Last week, Frontier Airlines took delivery of its latest A320, which flew from Hamburg to Milwaukee with a stop in Gander. The aircraft, registered N208FR, is the first of three A320s that Frontier is leasing from Dublin-based AWAS.

The aircraft’s delivery marks the return of Charlie the Cougar to Frontier’s family of spokesanimals. Charlie was previously seen on an A318 (N807FR, c/n 2271) that was parted out after it was returned to GECAS, according to Flightglobal.

Photo courtesy of Frontier Airlines.

Frontier will be receiving more A320s over the next few months. That latest 10-Q (third quarter) of parent company Republic Airways Holdings notes that “during 2010, the company entered into agreements to lease seven A320 aircraft for six years from the date of delivery.  These aircraft will be delivered between January 2011 and June 2011.”

Worthy of note – Republic’s second quarter 10-Q said this: “In June 2010, the company entered into agreements to lease six A320 aircraft for six years from the date of delivery.  These aircraft will be delivered between January 2011 and June 2011.” That same filing also said Frontier would acquire 14 A320s from January 2011 to November 2014 through purchase or lease, while the later third quarter filing upped that number to 15. So it appears one more A320 has been leased.

Meanwhile, Frontier is adding new A319s to the fleet. The third-quarter 10-Q filing says that “in October 2010, the Company entered into agreements to lease three A319 aircraft for eight years from the date of delivery.  These aircraft will be delivered between October and November 2010 and are expected to enter revenue service for Frontier between February and April 2011.”

A quick check of CH-Aviation would indicate that these aircraft are now registered as N951FR, N952FR, and N953FR. These three operated for Mexicana until this summer. It appears those leased aircraft were repossessed when the carrier hit financial trouble, so maybe Frontier was able to get these aircraft at a favorable price?

Frontier will build its E190 fleet later this year, with six E190s slated to arrive from August to December, part of a deal to acquire up to 24 of the aircraft that was announced in July. The remaining 18 orders can be converted to E195s if desired.

When one thinks about airlines that are active on Twitter, airlines like Southwest and JetBlue quickly come to mind, as both companies adopted the tool very early and also use it very effectively. Delta has also been getting a lot of press about its social media efforts as well.

One airline that has been making some great progress in this area – and I think has been overlooked a bit – is Frontier. The airline has been active on Twitter for awhile with its @flyfrontier account, but in August the Denver-based carrier launched a new account, @frontiercare, that is dedicated to customer service. Recently I had the chance to chat with Marco Toscano, one of the two employees behind the Twitter account.

Marco is a Frontier veteran – he started at the airline eight years ago as a flight attendant, and recently shifted from Frontier’s inflight department to marketing and social media. That front-line experience is useful for his new role. “Having good customer service skills obviously helps,” he says.

I was interested about why Frontier decided to create a separate account for customer service instead of doing everything though @flyfrontier. “I wanted to create a different channel…we have our @flyfrontier channel, which is really our corporate stance,” says Marco, while “@frontiercare is really designed for interacting with our passengers on a one-to-one basis.”

He continues: “We really don’t ever go out on @frontiercare and put out a tweet to our followers. @Frontiercare is really specific to an individual who is…expressing a frustration about a policy or an experience they’ve had with Frontier and then @frontiercare will come in and help them through that to reach a resolution.”

Marco is always searching for people to help. Of course, travelers who are aware of the tool can send a tweet to @frontiercare, but Frontier is also seeking complaints to proactively respond to them. “As soon as we see a frustration that’s being aired through Twitter, we’ll immediately respond to that passenger and try to find out what the issue is and how we can quickly resolve it for them if possible,” he says. Such a strategy creates an opportunity to turn a disgruntled traveler into a satisfied customer. “When the passenger isn’t expecting it, we do get rave reviews at the end of it,” says Marco.

So what can @frontiercare care do? Well, the employees behind the count are trained in Frontier’s reservation system, and they can take care of quick tasks likes changing seats or modifying a reservation. “If we can resolve an issue quickly on the spot then that works best for Froniter and our passenger,” says Marco. And if it’s a problem that can’t be handled quickly via Twitter, issues can be sent to a supervisor to rectify the situation.

I was interested if there were any set hours that @frontiercare was available. For example, Delta’s customer service account, @DeltaAssist, is active from 7am-12am Eastern on weekdays and 8am-10pm on the weekends. Marco tells me that “as the program expands, and as more people get comfortable with using @frontiercare to reach us, as we get more followers, we’re definitely going to look at putting some more structure to listening hours, or times, or having shifts that we will monitor Twitter.”

“We’re always listening,” he adds and says that they are even monitoring tweets during weekends and evenings “when we can catch them.” He continues: “As it gets more successful, we’ll definitely be looking at setting up more of a structure.”

Frontier is also active on Facebook, and is monitoring their page there for feedback, though Marco says Twitter is a bit easier for interaction, especially because it’s easy to hop over to private direct messages, which is helpful when sharing information like reservation numbers.

Anyway – it’s great to see another airline realize the power of Twitter as a customer service tool, and hopefully more customers will begin utilizing @frontiercare. My only suggestion for Frontier would be to set up some defined listening hours so people know when they can get a response, but it looks like that’s already on the agenda.

Yesterday morning, Frontier announced that it will operate seasonal nonstop service form Kansas City, with Saturday-only flights launching on December 18, operating until April 16. A second weekly flight (on Tuesdays) will fly from February 8 to March 29. Both flights will be operated with Republic E190s.

And while this is a new addition to Frontier’s winter schedule – this route has been operated by Midwest in the past. The route was operated with Republic E170s last winter. Midwest also flew it from December 2002 to April 2003, and from November 2006 to May 2008, according to DOT statistics.

In addition to this service, Frontier also flies to Ft. Myers from Denver year-round and to Milwaukee seasonally, according to Frontier’s website.

The flights will be Frontier’s only service from Kansas City to Florida – Midwest had previously flown from Kansas City to Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, and Tampa.

In terms of current Florida service from MCI – AirTran flies to Orlando, while Southwest flies to Orlando and Tampa, with Ft. Lauderdale service coming back in a few weeks.

(Edited at 12:20pm to reflect that Southwest is resuming seasonal MCI-FLL flights – it is not new service.)