Frontier suspending seasonal flights from Colorado Springs earlier this year

By Wayne Heilman June 26, 2018 | updated 8 years ago

Frontier Airlines will suspend seasonal flights to eight cities from Colorado Springs by the end of September, two months earlier than last year, according to schedules posted on the Denver-based low-fare carrier’s website.

The airline will temporarily halt nonstop flights to Seattle Aug. 9; San Jose, Calif., Aug. 10; San Diego Aug. 11; Washington, D.C., Sept. 28; Chicago and San Antonio Sept. 29; and Atlanta and Minneapolis-St. Paul Sept. 30. Frontier will continue operating nonstop daily flights to Las Vegas, Nev.; Orlando, Fla., and Phoenix, but won’t resume seasonal flights it operated last winter to Fort Myers and Tampa, Fla.

Last year, Frontier suspended seasonal flights in October and November, when the carrier also added the Fort Myers and Tampa flights.

Frontier started service in April to Atlanta, Minneapolis-St. Paul, San Antonio, San Jose and Seattle as well as resuming flights in Chicago and Washington.

The carrier began flights to San Diego in July.

Greg Phillips, director of aviation for the city of Colorado Springs, said Frontier officials told him the seasonal flights would resume next spring. Frontier officials did not respond to a telephone call or email seeking confirmation of the schedule changes and comment on when the seasonal flights would resume.

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“These flights have done well. All of them had load factors (percentage of seats sold) of more than 80 percent and that is very strong,” Phillips said. “All of the airlines are struggling with rapidly increasing fuel prices, which made up 40 percent of the cost of a flight. That doesn’t leave much room for a profit margin.”

Phillips said Frontier “continues to support Colorado Springs and by all indications will continue to be a strong player here. They said all along these would be seasonal flights and they said the flights will come back in the spring. We have to do everything we can to make sure we support these (remaining) flights. They depend on community support.”

Frontier returned to the Colorado Springs Airport in April 2016 with nonstop flights to Las Vegas, adding Orlando and Phoenix as well as seasonal flights to Chicago and Washington a few months later. The cities added earlier this year made Frontier the airport’s largest carrier, boarding 114,558 passengers on outgoing flights in the first five months of the year, nearly double the 60,562 it boarded during the same period last year.

The carrier was largely responsible for making Colorado Springs the nation’s fastest-growing airport last year, with passenger growth of 29.3 percent compared to 2016. Passenger traffic has continued to grow every month this year with a 29.1 percent gain in May to 77,243, and a 24.3 percent surge in the first five months of the year to 341,272. The April total was up 21.4 percent despite 72 flight cancellations related to a fire that resulted in $5 million in damage to the airport’s passenger terminal.

The airport also has nonstop flights operated by American, Delta and United airlines to Atlanta, Denver, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City.

Contact Wayne Heilman 636-0234 Facebook www.facebook.com/ wayne.heilman Twitter twitter.com/wayneheilman

Contact Wayne Heilman 636-0234

Facebook www.facebook.com/wayne.heilman

Twitter twitter.com/wayneheilman