Frontier navigates weather, ATC issues and long-haul competition to Q2 profit

Frontier Airlines on 1 August reports a $71m Q2 profit amid competition from international long-haul flights and ongoing operational difficulties. For comparison, the Denver-based ultra-low cost carrier (ULCC) made a $13m profit during the same period last year. In an observation recently shared by other US carriers, pent-up demand for international travel that “skews very, very heavily to Europe” is cutting into the domestic leisure market, Daniel Shurz, senior vice-president of commercial for Frontier, said during the carrier’s quarterly earnings call. CE Barry Biffle characterises the phenomenon as a “temporary headwind” and expresses confidence that the market will eventually shift back in favour of domestic flying. But the carrier still expects that its Q3 results will be affected by competition from long-haul carriers. The airline generated revenue of $967m, up 6% from $909m in Q2 of 2022, while costs were down 2% year-on-year, to $888m from $902m. Frontier flew 7.6m passengers in the three months ending 31 June, up 17% from last year. Like low-cost carrier peer JetBlue Airways, Frontier is experiencing weather and air traffic control-related operational disruptions. “Weather across the United States, in particular Florida, has produced record air traffic control delay programmes, resulting in the cancellation of 3% more flights in July,” Biffle says. “The biggest challenge is simply that we are seeing more ground-delay programmes and we are seeing them put on much sooner and for much longer duration than we’ve seen in the past,” he continues. Frontier executives say the company is incorporating ATC constraints into its network planning moving forward. “The forecast is that ATC staffing stays low for a few years,” Biffle says. “But we can plan around it much better.” <br/>