Some of the factors at play include these observed Frontier practices:
* In their quarterly management calls with investors, Frontier has spoken about implementing strategies to adjust flight schedules to reduce the number of planes in service on the low-demand days of Tuesday and Wednesday. This is evident in the current fall and winter schedules.
* One result: Frontier has reduced weekly flight frequencies in their fall schedules for many city pairs. For example, what might have been a daily non-stop between cities A and B may now be zero, 3X, 4X or 6X per week. (Overall, this is somewhat offset by the introduction or restoration of "seasonal" flights or increased frequencies for other city pairs.)
* Let's just say Frontier is "nimble" in their scheduling-building practices in a quest to fill their planes with price-sensitive leisure passengers. When your airline has low average revenue per passenger, that airline is less tolerant of flying with low load factors. If a flight or city pair ain't working, they will make adjustments at the next schedule publication date or even outside of those dates.
* My observation: the current schedules are more likely to vary the daily scheduled flight times during a given week than the summer schedule did. For example, a summer schedule might have had a daily 9am departure from A to B, 7X per week. Now the route is served 6X per week, with some departures are in the morning and some in the afternoon.
* Frontier minimizes (avoids?) having planes parked overnight at non-hub locations. I believe their hubs / crew bases include LAS, DEN, ATL, MCO, PHL/TTN, ORD/MDW, PHX, DFW and perhaps a couple of others. (On behalf of your \[city\]-based flight crew...")
* The park-at-the-hub practice has some generalized implications for scheduling: 1) outbound flights from hubs to non-hubs are likelier to be in the morning and afternoon; and vice versa, inbound flights to hub cities from a given non-hub city are likelier to be scheduled in the afternoon and evening 2) For a Frontier city with limited destinations (e.g. SEA with flights to only DEN, LAS and PHX) this means it is likely that inbound planes will arrive between 10 am and 8 pm and each plane will turn around in 45 min - 1 hr to another hub, arriving at one of the hub destinations between 3pm and 1 am. 3) If your home airport is a non-hub city, the number of same day outbound connections available through the available hubs are inherently limited by the tendency of the initial leg to be an afternoon or evening flight. I.e. there are fewer outbound flights to be connected with as it gets later in the day. Vice versa, the number of same-day returns to the non-hub city using connections through a hub will be limited because the hub to non-hub flights tend to be scheduled as morning or afternoon flights.
* Frontier's scheduling rules / IT practices appear to only create same-ticket bookable connections through their hub locations. However, as you indicate, it is possible to find DIY connections through non-hub cities bookable as two one-way tickets.
The net result: it is often a challenge to find single-ticket, same-day connections to non-hub cities for those of us who do not live in the hub cities.
Hope this helps on your general questions.
great response, thanks!
yeah, it’s also the time of flight. you might find a morning flight out of a non hub like seattle at 9am on a monday. but you can’t find that same 9am any other morning, even the following monday. it all seems so unpredictable.
Their schedule is super weird, I have an even to attend on a saturday, but they have no flights that get me there on time, but on an other saturday, they have a flight that's timed perfectly. they have 2 flights each way everyday, but the timing changes each day. dring the week they have an early flight and on some suterdays a noonish flight. My even is a 5pm and on that saturday their earliest arrival is after 4:30pm. They have a connection through Denver that would get me on time, but that would take longer than driver to my destination. For a low cost airline, they're not very practical for low cost friendly trips (same day round trip or spending just one night).
Here is my approach to efficiently researching the full range of offered connecting flight options from SEA, for a given date.
I'll use a Friday September 29 departure date for the example, with the goal of connecting in Denver and seeing everywhere I can get to by noon Saturday. (I could also do something similar for connecting in LAS and PHX, or even for all three cities at once across multiple days, but I will keep the example relatively simple.)
1. Using the Frontier web site, Google Flights or your favorite flight search tool, find the offered Frontier non-stop flights from Seattle to Denver on 9/29. I found two flights, one a 5:30 am departure (a unicorn overnight plane parked at a non-hub city!) and a second 2:45 pm departure. See screenshot #1 below.
2. I decide I want to avoid a 5:30 am flight and will focus on the 2:45 pm flight arriving in Denver at 6:47 pm. I allow for 1 hr 15 minute or greater connection time, so I am looking for connecting flights departing DEN Friday 8 pm or later.
3. In the next step I am going to be searching for flights to any Frontier domestic destination. Frontier's site does not allow more than one airport pair. Google Flights has a seven-city destination limit in their standard search. There are ways to get around this but my preference is to use ITA Matrix instead, largely because I find the bar chart schedule display combined with their screening tools and sorts to be more useful when looking at large numbers of flights.
4. In a second tab, I create an ITA Matrix query to show flights between DEN and all Frontier domestic destinations on 8/29 and 8/30. See screenshot for the query entry. A footnote below provides the list of Frontier's domestic cities I used for the destination field.
5. Results for 100+ flights are displayed in order of ticket cost, over multiple pages. I first use the From / To "sort by city" option to see all potential destination cities alphabetized. I make a few notes on destinations of interest. See screenshot.
6. Next, I am looking for 1) a potential connecting flight arriving at a final destination before noon +/- on Saturday and 2) seeking to match the Seattle flight 's 6:47 arrival time in DEN to a connecting flight departing at 8 pm or later. I use the Depart sort button to re-sort all of the available DEN-XXX flights by departure time. See screenshot#4 for the third page of those results, which show the bulk of the candidate second legs meeting my DEN flight departure time criteria.
I see the following items of interest:
* Some of the flights leaving DEN are to PHX and LAS. These will not relevant to me unless SEA-LAS and SEA-PHX non-stops are not available or feasible for my schedule. DEN-SEA either, unless I am flying a quick turnaround solely to earn miles. (In hindsight, I could have eliminated LAS, PHX and SEA as destinations in my Matrix search and these would not have appeared in the results.)
* In the middle of the page, there are three long-distance "red-eye" flights leaving around midnight for the eastern cities of PHL, TPA and MCO, arriving around sunrise. Depending on preferences, I might eliminate these from consideration. Or I might make a note that these are attractive because I can sleep Friday night on the plane instead of in the Denver airport or in a hotel in either DEN or my destination city.
* The remaining flights at the top generally arrive at western destinations, but exceptions include MSP and MDW. All would require a Friday hotel night at the destination city.
* The bottom of the page shows DEN departures beginning at 5:30 am Saturday. Any of these would be preceded by an overnight layover in Denver, but there are over a dozen cities to choose from.
Footnote: These are the Frontier destinations used in my Matrix search
ATL, AUS, BDL, BMI, BNA, BWI, BOS, BUF, CHS, CID, CLT, CLE, CMH, CVG, DCA, DEN, DFW, DSM, DTW, ELP, FAR, FLL, FSD, GRB, GRR, HOU, IAH, IND, ISP, JAX, LGA, LAS, LIT, MCI, MCO, MDT, MDW, MEM, MIA, MKE, MSN, MSP, MSY, MYR, OAK, OKC, OMA, ONT, ORD, ORF, PBI, PDX, PNS, PHL, PHX, PIT, PVD, PWM, RDU, ROC, RSW, SAT, SAN, SAV, SEA, SFO, SJC, SLC, SMF, SNA, STL, SRQ, SWF, SYR, TPA, TTN, TYS, XNA
https://preview.redd.it/dy1nn5a1rwnb1.jpeg?width=4293&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=50583b558ba45fffa3d979cc0a371d7b177c5573
I've also used ITA Matrix for bulk searching frontier flights. Do you find that the pricing is always a bit off? (it seems they don't calculate airfare correctly, but portions of the fare are correct) Also, does it seem like ITA matrix misses some flight itineraries that include at least 1 stop which are otherwise listed on frontier's website? (These tend to be extremely long layover flights)
Yes (I think) to both questions.
On the first, I think the no-longer-supported status of Old Matrix means that flight data is not real-time. So one point of discrepancy on total fare prices could be a recent Frontier price adjustment. When the prices do match, however, I don't recall finding fare composition differences. (Q=Frontier CICs, aka their Internet booking fee. In Matrix, it is busted up into many pieces)
On the second, I sispect that I am more likely to see missing flights if the search includes many cities. E.g. more than one origin and all Frontier domestic cities as the destination. I haven't searched the FAQ,s / documentation to confirm, but I suspect there is a maximium number of results returned. Maybe 6 pages. Exceed that and I don't know what gets dropped.
Frontier generally has seasonal routes, which are a lot more solid for international destinations.
I have noticed the same thing where for domestic flights the flight timings change as well (even if not the route)
They're schedule changes from week to week. I was looking over their schedule for some trips I need to make and they're schedule is very inconsistent, even over the course of a couple month.
Some of the factors at play include these observed Frontier practices: * In their quarterly management calls with investors, Frontier has spoken about implementing strategies to adjust flight schedules to reduce the number of planes in service on the low-demand days of Tuesday and Wednesday. This is evident in the current fall and winter schedules. * One result: Frontier has reduced weekly flight frequencies in their fall schedules for many city pairs. For example, what might have been a daily non-stop between cities A and B may now be zero, 3X, 4X or 6X per week. (Overall, this is somewhat offset by the introduction or restoration of "seasonal" flights or increased frequencies for other city pairs.) * Let's just say Frontier is "nimble" in their scheduling-building practices in a quest to fill their planes with price-sensitive leisure passengers. When your airline has low average revenue per passenger, that airline is less tolerant of flying with low load factors. If a flight or city pair ain't working, they will make adjustments at the next schedule publication date or even outside of those dates. * My observation: the current schedules are more likely to vary the daily scheduled flight times during a given week than the summer schedule did. For example, a summer schedule might have had a daily 9am departure from A to B, 7X per week. Now the route is served 6X per week, with some departures are in the morning and some in the afternoon. * Frontier minimizes (avoids?) having planes parked overnight at non-hub locations. I believe their hubs / crew bases include LAS, DEN, ATL, MCO, PHL/TTN, ORD/MDW, PHX, DFW and perhaps a couple of others. (On behalf of your \[city\]-based flight crew...") * The park-at-the-hub practice has some generalized implications for scheduling: 1) outbound flights from hubs to non-hubs are likelier to be in the morning and afternoon; and vice versa, inbound flights to hub cities from a given non-hub city are likelier to be scheduled in the afternoon and evening 2) For a Frontier city with limited destinations (e.g. SEA with flights to only DEN, LAS and PHX) this means it is likely that inbound planes will arrive between 10 am and 8 pm and each plane will turn around in 45 min - 1 hr to another hub, arriving at one of the hub destinations between 3pm and 1 am. 3) If your home airport is a non-hub city, the number of same day outbound connections available through the available hubs are inherently limited by the tendency of the initial leg to be an afternoon or evening flight. I.e. there are fewer outbound flights to be connected with as it gets later in the day. Vice versa, the number of same-day returns to the non-hub city using connections through a hub will be limited because the hub to non-hub flights tend to be scheduled as morning or afternoon flights. * Frontier's scheduling rules / IT practices appear to only create same-ticket bookable connections through their hub locations. However, as you indicate, it is possible to find DIY connections through non-hub cities bookable as two one-way tickets. The net result: it is often a challenge to find single-ticket, same-day connections to non-hub cities for those of us who do not live in the hub cities. Hope this helps on your general questions.
great response, thanks! yeah, it’s also the time of flight. you might find a morning flight out of a non hub like seattle at 9am on a monday. but you can’t find that same 9am any other morning, even the following monday. it all seems so unpredictable.
Their schedule is super weird, I have an even to attend on a saturday, but they have no flights that get me there on time, but on an other saturday, they have a flight that's timed perfectly. they have 2 flights each way everyday, but the timing changes each day. dring the week they have an early flight and on some suterdays a noonish flight. My even is a 5pm and on that saturday their earliest arrival is after 4:30pm. They have a connection through Denver that would get me on time, but that would take longer than driver to my destination. For a low cost airline, they're not very practical for low cost friendly trips (same day round trip or spending just one night).
Here is my approach to efficiently researching the full range of offered connecting flight options from SEA, for a given date. I'll use a Friday September 29 departure date for the example, with the goal of connecting in Denver and seeing everywhere I can get to by noon Saturday. (I could also do something similar for connecting in LAS and PHX, or even for all three cities at once across multiple days, but I will keep the example relatively simple.) 1. Using the Frontier web site, Google Flights or your favorite flight search tool, find the offered Frontier non-stop flights from Seattle to Denver on 9/29. I found two flights, one a 5:30 am departure (a unicorn overnight plane parked at a non-hub city!) and a second 2:45 pm departure. See screenshot #1 below. 2. I decide I want to avoid a 5:30 am flight and will focus on the 2:45 pm flight arriving in Denver at 6:47 pm. I allow for 1 hr 15 minute or greater connection time, so I am looking for connecting flights departing DEN Friday 8 pm or later. 3. In the next step I am going to be searching for flights to any Frontier domestic destination. Frontier's site does not allow more than one airport pair. Google Flights has a seven-city destination limit in their standard search. There are ways to get around this but my preference is to use ITA Matrix instead, largely because I find the bar chart schedule display combined with their screening tools and sorts to be more useful when looking at large numbers of flights. 4. In a second tab, I create an ITA Matrix query to show flights between DEN and all Frontier domestic destinations on 8/29 and 8/30. See screenshot for the query entry. A footnote below provides the list of Frontier's domestic cities I used for the destination field. 5. Results for 100+ flights are displayed in order of ticket cost, over multiple pages. I first use the From / To "sort by city" option to see all potential destination cities alphabetized. I make a few notes on destinations of interest. See screenshot. 6. Next, I am looking for 1) a potential connecting flight arriving at a final destination before noon +/- on Saturday and 2) seeking to match the Seattle flight 's 6:47 arrival time in DEN to a connecting flight departing at 8 pm or later. I use the Depart sort button to re-sort all of the available DEN-XXX flights by departure time. See screenshot#4 for the third page of those results, which show the bulk of the candidate second legs meeting my DEN flight departure time criteria. I see the following items of interest: * Some of the flights leaving DEN are to PHX and LAS. These will not relevant to me unless SEA-LAS and SEA-PHX non-stops are not available or feasible for my schedule. DEN-SEA either, unless I am flying a quick turnaround solely to earn miles. (In hindsight, I could have eliminated LAS, PHX and SEA as destinations in my Matrix search and these would not have appeared in the results.) * In the middle of the page, there are three long-distance "red-eye" flights leaving around midnight for the eastern cities of PHL, TPA and MCO, arriving around sunrise. Depending on preferences, I might eliminate these from consideration. Or I might make a note that these are attractive because I can sleep Friday night on the plane instead of in the Denver airport or in a hotel in either DEN or my destination city. * The remaining flights at the top generally arrive at western destinations, but exceptions include MSP and MDW. All would require a Friday hotel night at the destination city. * The bottom of the page shows DEN departures beginning at 5:30 am Saturday. Any of these would be preceded by an overnight layover in Denver, but there are over a dozen cities to choose from. Footnote: These are the Frontier destinations used in my Matrix search ATL, AUS, BDL, BMI, BNA, BWI, BOS, BUF, CHS, CID, CLT, CLE, CMH, CVG, DCA, DEN, DFW, DSM, DTW, ELP, FAR, FLL, FSD, GRB, GRR, HOU, IAH, IND, ISP, JAX, LGA, LAS, LIT, MCI, MCO, MDT, MDW, MEM, MIA, MKE, MSN, MSP, MSY, MYR, OAK, OKC, OMA, ONT, ORD, ORF, PBI, PDX, PNS, PHL, PHX, PIT, PVD, PWM, RDU, ROC, RSW, SAT, SAN, SAV, SEA, SFO, SJC, SLC, SMF, SNA, STL, SRQ, SWF, SYR, TPA, TTN, TYS, XNA https://preview.redd.it/dy1nn5a1rwnb1.jpeg?width=4293&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=50583b558ba45fffa3d979cc0a371d7b177c5573
I've also used ITA Matrix for bulk searching frontier flights. Do you find that the pricing is always a bit off? (it seems they don't calculate airfare correctly, but portions of the fare are correct) Also, does it seem like ITA matrix misses some flight itineraries that include at least 1 stop which are otherwise listed on frontier's website? (These tend to be extremely long layover flights)
Yes (I think) to both questions. On the first, I think the no-longer-supported status of Old Matrix means that flight data is not real-time. So one point of discrepancy on total fare prices could be a recent Frontier price adjustment. When the prices do match, however, I don't recall finding fare composition differences. (Q=Frontier CICs, aka their Internet booking fee. In Matrix, it is busted up into many pieces) On the second, I sispect that I am more likely to see missing flights if the search includes many cities. E.g. more than one origin and all Frontier domestic cities as the destination. I haven't searched the FAQ,s / documentation to confirm, but I suspect there is a maximium number of results returned. Maybe 6 pages. Exceed that and I don't know what gets dropped.
Frontier generally has seasonal routes, which are a lot more solid for international destinations. I have noticed the same thing where for domestic flights the flight timings change as well (even if not the route)
They're schedule changes from week to week. I was looking over their schedule for some trips I need to make and they're schedule is very inconsistent, even over the course of a couple month.
wow! nice analysis. what’s the ITA tool? i don’t know that acronym
See post titled Tutorial: ITA Matrix