By Kelly Yamanouchi
Denver Post Staff Writer
In nearly six years, Frontier Airlines has has come close to tripling the number of cities it flies to – from 20 at the end of 1999 to 54 now, in the United States and Mexico.
But when Frontier started two daily flights to Ohio’s Akron-Canton Airport in June, people were scratching their heads.
Why not Boston, one of the largest cities not already on Frontier’s route map? Why not other large metropolises or the latest new vacation spot? Why service an area best known as the home of Goodyear Tire and Rubber, Timken Steel, Progressive Auto Insurance and manufacturing giant Diebold?
The unconventional choice was the culmination of a three-year courtship.
Akron-Canton Airport promotes itself as an airport of low-cost carriers, but it wanted one more source of revenue. It wanted another discount airline, and it wanted flights that would go west. None of its carriers at the time flew to Denver.
But when the airport’s marketing director, Kristie Van Auken met Frontier planning director Joe Cambron and floated the idea of Frontier flying to Akron-Canton Airport, she said, “He kind of looked at me and said, ‘Why would we ever go there?”‘
It was her job to explain that Akron-Canton Airport, where the largest carrier is AirTran, is about 50 minutes from Cleveland and a two-hour drive from Columbus and Pittsburgh. Its landing fees also are much less expensive than Cleveland’s.
Frontier regularly gets letters from customers asking for flights to new cities, Cambron said, and has heard from customers who want flights to Ohio.
“For a time we just had to tell people to drive from (Indianapolis),” he said.
Van Auken also found herself dealing with about 20 people a day who wanted to fly between Akron-Canton and Denver. Their only option was to connect through another city. They wouldn’t come close to filling even one of Frontier’s Airbus planes, which seat 114-132 passengers.
“So we had to start laying out our case,” Van Auken said. “(Airline) planners don’t get fired if they go into Cleveland. They do if they go into Akron-Canton, and it’s a disaster. (Coming here) is a leap of faith.”
Cambron remembers being so aggressively courted by Van Auken at industry meetings that “there was a guarantee that I’d be meeting with her twice a year.”
Over time, he softened to her pitch.
“Every time I met with her, she had sort of sweetened the arrangement a little bit, to the point that it was starting to become irresistible,” Cambron said. He also had dinner with airport director Fred Krum to talk about the market.
Van Auken and Krum followed up by meeting other Frontier executives.
“At every level of the organization we would come in and do a lot of romancing,” Van Auken said. They had some familiarity – Frontier’s chief financial officer, Paul Tate, is from Canton.
The airport promised to help Frontier get the traffic it needed for the route to make sense. It helped Frontier get billboard ads outside Cleveland Hopkins Airport, and airport officials introduced Frontier executives to the business community.
Earlier this year, Frontier offered introductory round-trip fares of $198, and on June 15, Akron-Canton Airport officials welcomed the first flight with fanfare. So far, Frontier is pleased with the marriage.
“This has been a great route for us,” said Frontier spokesman Joe Hodas. It has been performing at or above system averages. Planes were about 85 to 90 percent full on average in June.
Although Frontier didn’t fly to Akron-Canton for all of June, its Denver-to-Akron-Canton flights carried 2,364 passengers, according to U.S. Bureau of Transportation statistics. In July, Akron-Canton Airport had a record number of passengers using the airport, up 10.3 percent from the same month a year earlier.
Other major airlines fly from Denver to Cleveland, but not from Denver to Akron-Canton.
Small regional markets can be very profitable, said Evergreen- based aviation consultant Mike Boyd, who has Akron-Canton Airport as a client. Akron-Canton allows Frontier to attract Cleveland- area customers without going head- to-head against Continental, which has a hub in Cleveland, he said.
“Markets like these will become increasingly important to Frontier because, as legacy carriers like United become stronger, they’re going to become tougher to deal with,” Boyd said. “Frontier can go (from Denver) to markets like Akron-Canton, and I think United wouldn’t want to take a chance on it.”
Staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi can be reached at kyamanouchi@denverpost.com or 303-820-1488.
