Frontier Airlines will begin flying from Denver to Hartford, Conn., in March, the carrier announced Tuesday.
Also next year, Frontier will pull out of Baltimore/Washington International Airport, discontinuing its daily Denver-Baltimore flight effective Jan. 8.
The Denver-Baltimore route “just isn’t performing the way we need it to,” said Frontier spokesman Joe Hodas. The carrier will continue its flights to Reagan National Airport near Washington, D.C.
Southwest Airlines, a new rival for Frontier in Denver this year, started flying the Denver-Baltimore route in March. But for Frontier, “it’s been a troubled route for longer than Southwest’s presence,” Hodas said.
Frontier’s new route from Denver to Bradley International Airport in Hartford will start March 2, with one daily nonstop flight on Airbus A319 jets, which seat 132 passengers.
Frontier is the first airline to fly nonstop between Denver and Hartford since United discontinued service on the route after Sept. 11, 2001.
“Competitively speaking, it’s a good situation for us,” Hodas said. He added that the red-eye flight allows the airline to get better use out of its aircraft.
Hartford was the second-largest unserved market from Denver, after Raleigh-Durham, N.C., according to Frontier.
The new route also marks Frontier’s return to New England after pulling out of Boston in 2002. According to John Happ, Frontier’s senior vice president of marketing and planning, the carrier gets more requests from passengers to serve New England than any other area in the United States.
Separately, Frontier is renewing its partnership this ski season with Winter Park and Copper Mountain, where travelers can get 2-for-1 lift tickets in exchange for showing their Frontier boarding pass receipt at either of the two resorts.
Staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi can be reached at 303-954-1488 or kyamanouchi@denverpost.com.
