Newly public frontier looks beyond losses to huge and sustained leisure travel opportunities

US consumers have spent the last year largely cooped up, postponing long-planned vacations and trips to visit friends and family. That’s changing, and as the country wakes from its pandemic torpor, Frontier Airlines, flush with cash from its recent stock market debut, is positioning itself to take advantage of what it calls a “surge” in leisure travel. In fact, Frontier executives think the surge will last as long as 18 months, as people flock to the airways to take summer trips they put off last year and travel again for the year-end holidays. With a network primed for leisure flights and its focus on keeping costs low, Frontier thinks it’s uniquely positioned to reap the benefits as Americans head to the beach. But it’s not just the beach; the nature of travel will have changed as well. Workplace flexibility could redound to Frontier’s benefit as “work from home” becomes “work from anywhere.” As long as companies don’t mandate workers to return to their offices, and as the fear of the pandemic recedes, more people will take to the airways to work from wherever they want, Frontier believes. This could shift more leisure travel — traditionally heavy during the weekends — to midweek. “This could last for years,” CEO Barry Biffle said during the company’s inaugural quarterly earnings call on Thursday. The surge could result in people not being able to go where they want, simply because there just aren’t enough flights. Biffle thinks people who wait too long to make their summer plans will be out of luck, and this problem will snowball as more people begin to travel. <br/>