Frontier Airlines’ chief operating officer is leaving for Air Canada, a much bigger airline that last year completed a court-administered reorganization.
Sean Menke, 36, has been at the Denver-based airline since 1999. He started as director of marketing and planning, then became vice president of planning and revenue management, then senior vice president of marketing. As COO since July 2004, Menke has been responsible for day-to-day operational organization, including customer service, maintenance, flight operations and reservations, as well as marketing and branding.
Menke will stay until the end of June. The company is searching for a replacement.
Menke will become executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Montreal-based Air Canada on July 11. In that role, he’ll be responsible for marketing, sales, scheduling, brand, research and product development, international affairs, alliances and the charter service, Jetz.
“It’s all about the hockey,” Menke joked. “To be honest with you, this is probably the toughest decision I’ve made in my life. Frontier is just a wonderful company.”
“But I was presented with an opportunity to grow for myself as well as … an opportunity to grow in the worldwide market,” Menke said. “I just felt it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up … to sort of spread my wings a little bit more.”
With a single hub in Denver, Frontier flies around the United States and to Mexico. Air Canada flies around the world, including to Europe, South America, Asia and Australia.
Menke “has been a tremendous contributor to Frontier’s success,” helping through “enormous periods of growth and industry challenges, Frontier chief executive Jeff Potter said.
Potter said Menke’s vision helped create Frontier’s “A whole different animal” branding and advertising campaign.
Menke’s base salary at Frontier is $200,000.
Since Menke became chief operating officer, Frontier has expanded flights to Mexico, completed a fleet transition from Boeing to Airbus jets and pulled out of an unsuccessful Los Angeles “focus city” flight operation.
Frontier has also switched to a new reservations system and changed its website. The transition has caused operational and financial disruptions, including problems with website booking and phone reservations.
Like many carriers in the troubled U.S. airline industry, Frontier has struggled with high fuel prices and competition. Frontier has lost money since the beginning of 2004.
Before joining Frontier, Menke was a senior planner in domestic schedule planning at United Airlines. Before that, he was director of planning at Colorado Springs-based Western Pacific Airlines.
The stock of publicly traded Frontier closed up 3 cents on Thursday to $12.23.
Staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi can be reached at kyamanouchi@denverpost.com or 303-820-1488.
