If you have a flight on Spirit or Frontier, the 2 companies are merging

[CruisingSteve]

Link to article
Spirit Airlines, Frontier to merge in $2.9 billion deal (msn.com)

[jeffmw]

This is typically fairly bad for consumers. For example, in Cleveland where I live, Frontier and Spirit both maintain a decent number of routes to vacation destinations. With one fewer airline (a discount airline, at that), prices will likely get less competitive.

 

[JasonOasis]

If this is approved by federal regulators and state regulators (where both these carriers have significant operations) it will still take years before customers see any changes or differences.  The appetite for mergers in the airline industry has soured in recent years especially after the mergers between the legacy carriers and Southwest/AirTran.

In all cases Delta and Northwest, United and Continental, American and US Airways, and even Southwest and Air Tran.  They all promised no  service cuts, no jobs loss, and a whole host of other things just to gain both state and federal regulatory approval and once approval was given did the exact opposite of what they promised. I remember when United and US Airways wanted to merge in the early 2000s but United called it off after they deem the price of federal regulators demands to high.  It is without question the flying public has paid the price for all the mergers here in the US.  The DOT and state agencies will not make this easy on Frontier or Spirit, just look at the airport around the country that use to have thriving hubs before the mergers that even before the pandemic were reduced down to almost nothing.  Think Memphis, Pittsburg, St. Louis, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Atlanta (Air Tran)  and many others all lost out as a result of airline mergers despite assurances to these states and the DOT that exact opposite would happen. There is a need for low cost carriers in the US whether you fly on them or not the LCCs or ULCC (ultra low cost carries) as they are known in the industry do a great job of keeping ticket prices low. That use to be the job of Southwest but Southwest isn't a ULCC and they in many cases don't qualify as an LCC which is how both Frontier and Spirit came to be. Both Frontier and Spirit are in the same area within the industry if one of these carrier ceases to exist it will result is higher ticket prices across the board.  In recent years the DOT has signaled they intend to keep flying both affordable and accessible to all. To do this you need thriving LCC and ULCC airlines a merger does exact opposite so it will be interesting to see how the DOT and others respond and what demands they make.

[smokeybandit]

Based on this article, Spirit and Frontier only make up about 6% of seats available in the American market and don't have that much overlap between markets.

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/07/frontier-and-spirit-to-merge-creating-5th-largest-airline-in-us.html?__source=androidappshare

 

 

[Matt]

Merging airlines is always bad for consumers. Less airlines = less competition = higher prices.

The Southwest/Airtran merger was terrible for pricing since the merger, IMO.

[12thman]

31 minutes ago, Matt said:

Merging airlines is always bad for consumers. Less airlines = less competition = higher prices.

The Southwest/Airtran merger was terrible for pricing since the merger, IMO.

I'd disagree, sometimes merge is a good thing because one airline in this case had poor aircraft maintenance. Pricing might have suffered but when your at 30,000 feet that cost will seem insignificant compared to your safety. 

When airlines are in financial trouble the first thing they cut is maintenance, defer everything they can and push it back until it must be fixed. 

[smokeybandit]

39 minutes ago, Matt said:

Merging airlines is always bad for consumers. Less airlines = less competition = higher prices.

The Southwest/Airtran merger was terrible for pricing since the merger, IMO.

Southwest/Airtran was more of Southwest poaching all the things they didn't have that Airtran did (international service, Atlanta service, better IT infrastructure).

This merger is a bit more complimentary between the two ULCC airlines.

[Zacharius]

2 hours ago, Matt said:

Merging airlines is always bad for consumers. Less airlines = less competition = higher prices.

The Southwest/Airtran merger was terrible for pricing since the merger, IMO.

Not always. Adjusted for inflation, the Southwest/Airtran merger didn't really raise fares. Let's take a look at Las Vegas, which was a major WN focus city both before and after the merger. In 2019, the average fare for a flight to/from Vegas was $256.93 adjusted for 2021 dollars; in 2012, which was the first full year after the merger closed, the average fare was $317.38 in 2021 dollars. So, adjusted for today's dollars, fares to/from Las Vegas have decreased since the merger. But let's look at a couple airports that both airlines served before the merger, again all adjusted for 2021 dollars:

Los Angeles: 2019 = $376.92, 2012 = $473.01

Ft. Lauderdale: 2019 = $272.33, 2012 = $319.69 (Southwest is the largest airline at FLL)

Chicago Midway: 2019 = $328.46, 2012 = $351.65 (Southwest is, by far, the largest airline at MDW)

Kansas City: 2019 = $385.84, 2012 = $411.94 (Southwest is the largest airline at MCI) 

 

So, in most cases, the fares are actually down when adjusted. Now, using 2021 numbers is a bit...off...because of Covid and its impact on economics, but not so much that it makes the statements false. Airfares, when adjusted for inflation, really haven't changed much over the years, and mergers don't raise the prices of air travel in quite the same way as some other industries.

(Source of data is US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, https://www.transtats.bts.gov/AverageFare/) 

[jeffmw]

I think this affects people from larger markets less. If you're in a big city, particularly where you have an airline hub or two, an airline going away doesn't seem to matter as much.

In smaller markets it often matters a ton. You might go from 2 flights in an entire day to 1, or 3 flights to 2. It not only can drastically affect pricing, but it's very annoying from a scheduling standpoint. Suddenly, you might only be able to fly somewhere at night, which leads to an extra night in a hotel. Or maybe the only flight is at 6 a.m. For work purposes this can really suck when you're trying to limit the time away on a business trip. 

[AlmondFarmer]

If the merger goes through, there will be a new second worst airline. 

[smokeybandit]

20 minutes ago, jeffmw said:

I think this affects people from larger markets less. If you're in a big city, particularly where you have an airline hub or two, an airline going away doesn't seem to matter as much.

In smaller markets it often matters a ton. You might go from 2 flights in an entire day to 1, or 3 flights to 2. It not only can drastically affect pricing, but it's very annoying from a scheduling standpoint. Suddenly, you might only be able to fly somewhere at night, which leads to an extra night in a hotel. Or maybe the only flight is at 6 a.m. For work purposes this can really suck when you're trying to limit the time away on a business trip. 

Just the same in smaller markets, you'll now have more options for connecting destinations. Plus people who fly Frontier are used to inconvenient flight times already. 

[Zacharius]

23 minutes ago, jeffmw said:

I think this affects people from larger markets less. If you're in a big city, particularly where you have an airline hub or two, an airline going away doesn't seem to matter as much.

In smaller markets it often matters a ton. You might go from 2 flights in an entire day to 1, or 3 flights to 2. It not only can drastically affect pricing, but it's very annoying from a scheduling standpoint. Suddenly, you might only be able to fly somewhere at night, which leads to an extra night in a hotel. Or maybe the only flight is at 6 a.m. For work purposes this can really suck when you're trying to limit the time away on a business trip. 

In this case, I can't think of many airports served by Spirit and/or Frontier that only have 2-3 total flights in a day (Latrobe, PA perhaps?) , so this merger shouldn't impact those super small airports very much. Both Spirit and Frontier mostly use mid to large-sized airports that are served by many other airlines. 

[Zacharius]

9 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

Just the same in smaller markets, you'll now have more options for connecting destinations. Plus people who fly Frontier are used to inconvenient flight times already. 

Someone's inconvenient schedule is another person's perfect schedule. Frontier and Spirit don't fly many 2am departures, for example. Some, sure, but not a ton. I love 6am flights, others may hate them; I hate 9pm flights, others may love them. 

[smokeybandit]

11 minutes ago, Zacharius said:

Someone's inconvenient schedule is another person's perfect schedule. Frontier and Spirit don't fly many 2am departures, for example. Some, sure, but not a ton. I love 6am flights, others may hate them; I hate 9pm flights, others may love them. 

Frontier has 6 flights out of Denver between 1-3am and over a dozen between 10pm and 3am

[jeffmw]

35 minutes ago, Zacharius said:

Someone's inconvenient schedule is another person's perfect schedule. Frontier and Spirit don't fly many 2am departures, for example. Some, sure, but not a ton. I love 6am flights, others may hate them; I hate 9pm flights, others may love them. 

Yes, but choice is what matters. For one trip vs. another my ideal departure time could be totally different. Sometimes I want to leave at 6 a.m. Sometimes I'd like to go late morning or midday. Sometimes I'd like to leave in the evening. It all depends on what I'm doing when I get there, why I'm going, how long I'm going to be there, etc. The issue with smaller markets is you may not have a choice. The only flight on a particular day might be early morning or late night. 

A cruise is a great example, actually. If I'm flying home from Miami or Fort Lauderdale after a cruise, it's possible the only flight on a given day is at 8 a.m., which I can't make after getting off a ship. So I might be forced to either pay an exorbitant amount to fly that night on a full-service airline, or stay an entire extra day and night and delay getting home. 

This actually just influenced a cruise we are taking. We wanted to go on the Allure this March out of Miami, but the crappy flight schedule coming home was going to add $1500+ to the cost of the trip. So, instead we're going on a different ship out of Orlando, even though we preferred the other cruise.

[Matt]

3 hours ago, smokeybandit said:

Southwest/Airtran was more of Southwest poaching all the things they didn't have that Airtran did (international service, Atlanta service, better IT infrastructure).

I agree, and Atlanta was a classic example of why airline mergers are terrible.

SWA was poised to enter Atlanta market, which was dominated by Delta, and to a lesser degree Airtran.

If SWA had come in, third player would have introduced competition for prices.

Instead, SWA took over airtran's routes and competition remained unchange and prices are still crap from there.

Whether airlines or cell carriers, less competition is bad for consumers. We want the companies at each other's throats and working to outdo each other. Mergers are the antithesis of that.

[Zacharius]

58 minutes ago, smokeybandit said:

Frontier has 6 flights out of Denver between 1-3am and over a dozen between 10pm and 3am

For tonight, I see zero flights out of Denver between 1am and 3am. I see six Frontier flights between 10pm and 11pm, all going west and gaining an hour, and an additional seven after midnight, all redeyes to the east or Mexico (which some people love, so it goes back to being inconvenient for some and perfect for others). Out of the roughly 50 Frontier flights departing DEN in the 24 hours between 8am today and 8am tomorrow, that is six out of 50...higher than most airlines, sure, but at 12% of their total DEN departures (which is their largest airport by far), it's not some overwhelmingly massive part of their operation. 

Source: https://www.flydenver.com/flight-results/frontier?search_type=departures

[smokeybandit]

Here's the route map for the two. You see there's not much overlap

 

[Matt]

I loved this article: https://www.pointchaser.com/spirit-frontier-merger-worst-airline/

Quote

It paints a rosy picture and the canvas looks nice, but you know what isn’t? The new airline that will result from this merger.

Because when two terrible companies merge, you rarely get a better product. You get one sh***y airline. With the competition eliminated, the new Spirit doesn’t have much incentive to provide the only thing it did well: Ultra-low fares. Higher fares are a given after any merger. The notion that two low-cost carriers merging will mean otherwise is laughable. 

 

[teddy]

We dipped our toes into Spirit in January 2020 for our flight to FLL.  After that round trip, we decided we'd rather pay more up front to fly on a legacy carrier than ever play around with a low cost one again.

I know all the arguments for low cost airlines, but they don't work for us.  I also have heard good things about Southwest, but their fares are never as cheap (out of PWM) as American (and sometimes Delta).

I still say this after having American cancel a flight on us two days ago that caused us to spend another night in Miami.

[WAYNO]

We tried Spirit also.  It just didn't pencil out in the end.  With add-on costs such as luggage, membership fees, and even having to pay to talk to an agent, in the end, a major carrier would have been cheaper. 

 

I understand if you're needing a cheap way to get somewhere, and you have zero luggage, as well as expect absolutely nothing in amenities, then Spirit could save some people a little money.

 

 

[Gewel]

That's terrible.  Frontier is bottom of the barrel.

[jbrinkm]

1 hour ago, Gewel said:

That's terrible.  Frontier is bottom of the barrel.

I need to knock on wood or something here, but we've been flying Frontier almost exclusively for the past 4-5 years and have never had any kind of a problem - everything has always gone very smoothly. I know you have to pay extra for everything but you have to now also with all of the big airlines as well. Since we're usually paying for a whole family, I love the prices, especially when we can fly on flexible days to get the best deals. 

[smokeybandit]

I said nice things earlier about Frontier but I take that back.

 

I sail next Sunday and had an early morning flight next Saturday. I log into my account today for other reasons and noticed my early morning flight is now mid-afternoon. I never got any notification about the change.

 

Now I have to scramble for transportation to Galveston

[jbrinkm]

On 3/13/2022 at 3:28 PM, smokeybandit said:

I said nice things earlier about Frontier but I take that back.

OK, @smokeybandit, you and I are in the same boat. I DEFINITELY shouldn't have said anything good about Frontier earlier and tempted the flight gods. 

DH and I just spent an agonizing 6 hours yesterday trying to get on the phone with Frontier to fix our flight. We booked a non-stop and I just checked the app to see our exact flight time  and it was switched to a connecting flight that would not have gotten us there in time for the cruise. They eliminated the direct flight and put us on a connecting one WITHOUT TELLING US. Luckily we have another airport within 30 minutes of us and there was still a direct flight there that worked for us, but getting a representative on the phone was extremely difficult and frustrating. I think we could have switched to a flight the day before from the same airport by going online without a fee but we would have had to leave at 5am the day before and added a hotel cost. (Please don't tell me the reasons not to fly on the day of the cruise. I know the arguments & risk but we made the best decision we could with our circumstances).

Since we needed to switch airports, we called customer service. On hold 45 minutes (not bad actually, I thought it would be longer!). Told the rep my problem but before I could tell him the solution I had already discovered, he quickly said he would put me on hold to look into it. Thirty minutes later, I started getting announcements in Spanish (I don't speak Spanish well, just a few survival phrases). Then 10 minutes after that, someone answered the phone again, but in Spanish. I told her I'm sorry but I don't speak Spanish and she asked in English how she could help me. I told her that I've actually been on hold for a different representative who was helping me but I'm not sure what happened to him. She said OK and hung up on me. So I went through the process again, waited a while, got hung up on as soon as they answered. My husband and I BOTH then called again to get on hold to double our chances. He got connected - I kept getting busy signals or nonstop ringing - and he got hung up on when they put him on hold to check on flights. I finally got through and he got through again - both of us were on hold, his picked up first and he was able to actually make the change this time, although it took almost an hour (I was still on hold this whole time) and they wanted to charge us the flight difference to change airports and we had to tell them that we shouldn't be charged when Frontier made the change without notifying us. They had to transfer us to a different department at that point and we just white-knuckled our way through the hold music, hoping we wouldn't get disconnected again. It worked out this time, we were able to make the switch (whew) but have kind of lousy seats now. I know that is a small thing, but irritates me because I booked our flights early the first time and paid for seats and got really, really good seats at the front where we could get off quickly. Now we're split up towards the back.

 

[jbrinkm]

Back to complain about Frontier again... I just looked through our new flight confirmation email and there are two new pieces of information that really stink. First, it looks like they are set to charge people for USING AN AGENT AT THE AIRPORT. They happily confirm that I have "No Pre-Purchased Airport Agent Assistance" for checking my luggage. Talk about nickel-and-diming! And, secondly, they are limiting checked bags to 40lbs. Neither of those things were true when I bought my ticket but I'm really glad I decided to buy the bundle that gives us each a checked AND a carry on bag this time. I anticipate that we'll be using more carry on bags than we intended to make up for the lost weight in the checked bags...

[Ampurp85]

If I can recall both Spirit and Frontier have always had a 40lb checked bag situation and a cost to use an agent. There is no cost if you have to check a bag but if you need other assistance. Like as long as you print your boarding pass at home or at the kiosk you will be fine. The kiosk will also print your luggage tags. I did research when I last used Spirit, I have flown them twice, and I read they only purchase one baggage lane and small service area at the airports to save on cost. Therefore, they have less customer service presence at the airports, which is why they charge to use them. 

[jbrinkm]

3 hours ago, Ampurp85 said:

If I can recall both Spirit and Frontier have always had a 40lb checked bag situation and a cost to use an agent. There is no cost if you have to check a bag but if you need other assistance. Like as long as you print your boarding pass at home or at the kiosk you will be fine. The kiosk will also print your luggage tags. I did research when I last used Spirit, I have flown them twice, and I read they only purchase one baggage lane and small service area at the airports to save on cost. Therefore, they have less customer service presence at the airports, which is why they charge to use them. 

I've never flown on Spirit but have extensive experience with Frontier, and I can tell you that this is new on Frontier. Maybe they are trying to align with Spirit policies as part of the merger. We've ALWAYS had a 50lb limit on our checked bags for the past 4-5 years we've flown almost exclusively on Frontier. And, it says "new" right on my email (see above...)

Frontier also always has charged for phone bookings but we've gotten our boarding passes at the gate before (we had them on our phones but I guess they wanted us to have paper copies?...) with no charge. I'm not as certain about that one because we almost always check in ahead of time, but we've also freely used the gate agents with no thought of being charged. I don't remember ever seeing this message on any of my prior confirmed flight emails.

[Ampurp85]

3 hours ago, jbrinkm said:

I've never flown on Spirit but have extensive experience with Frontier, and I can tell you that this is new on Frontier. Maybe they are trying to align with Spirit policies as part of the merger. We've ALWAYS had a 50lb limit on our checked bags for the past 4-5 years we've flown almost exclusively on Frontier. And, it says "new" right on my email (see above...)

Frontier also always has charged for phone bookings but we've gotten our boarding passes at the gate before (we had them on our phones but I guess they wanted us to have paper copies?...) with no charge. I'm not as certain about that one because we almost always check in ahead of time, but we've also freely used the gate agents with no thought of being charged. I don't remember ever seeing this message on any of my prior confirmed flight emails.

My brother usually does Frontier and he always paid overage if he was over 40lbs, maybe it's a Chicago thing. But since they are merging, they might be streamlining the polices. My brother did say Frontier was a bit better when flew Spirit last October so I they will be equally bad soon.

[smokeybandit]

Tap the breaks on this

 

JetBlue wants to throw a ton of cash at Spirit

 

https://ir.spirit.com/news-releases/news-details/2022/Spirit-Airlines-Confirms-Receipt-of-Unsolicited-Proposal-from-JetBlue-Airways/default.aspx

[Matt]

As a JetBlue fan, I'm not sure how I feel about Spirit. I mean, I would never fly Spirit. So I'd hate for it to "dilute" JetBlue experience.

Of course, I'm against any airline merger because I think it ends up as anti-competitive and worse for consumers, but I'm sure that boat has sailed already.

[smokeybandit]

On 4/5/2022 at 3:53 PM, smokeybandit said:

Tap the breaks on this

 

JetBlue wants to throw a ton of cash at Spirit

 

https://ir.spirit.com/news-releases/news-details/2022/Spirit-Airlines-Confirms-Receipt-of-Unsolicited-Proposal-from-JetBlue-Airways/default.aspx