As travelers begin planning for summer vacations, airlines are preparing for what could be their busiest summer travel season ever.
Frontier Airlines is adding capacity on 23 routes it flies out of Denver in a seasonal increase for the summer.
Frontier is upgrading flights from regional jets to larger Airbus planes from Denver to Austin, Texas; Spokane, Wash.; Dayton, Ohio; and San Jose, Calif. It is adding flights on routes from Denver to Nashville, Tenn.; Portland, Ore.; Seattle; San Francisco; New York; Detroit; San Diego; Minneapolis-St. Paul; and Indianapolis. Seasonal flights to Anchorage, Alaska, resume May 6.
With its summer schedule announcement, Frontier said it is telling travelers “to get out of their cars and take to the air” as gasoline prices rise.
“There are people who will say, ‘You know, I’m not going to fire up the Yukon and drive from Denver to Miami. We’re going to fly,”‘ said Terry Trippler, airline analyst with CheapSeats.com.
But for airlines, too, fuel costs are “the main concern,” he said.
Trippler said the price he paid for a flight from Detroit to Tokyo, for example, was lower than the cost of fuel Northwest might pay per passenger. Though he said that does not take into account other revenue sources or other expenses, the example is “just to show how much fuel a 747 takes.”
An ongoing fare war in Denver has kept many airfares relatively low. But American Airlines on Wednesday increased its round-trip fares by $10. Frontier matched the increase in some markets.
Staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi can be reached at 303-820-1488 or kyamanouchi@denverpost.com.
