Frontier has celebrated four years of serving MacArthur Airport. Its route map grew quickly, with 13 destinations served the following year, although they were scaled back. Now, in 2021, the ultra-low-cost carrier (ULCC) has eight routes and its capacity is almost back at the 2019 level.
Happy birthday!
Frontier inaugurated Long Island operations on August 16th, 2017, four years ago. Orlando was the first destination, joined by Fort Myers, Miami, New Orleans, Tampa, and West Palm Beach in early October.
The following year, Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago O'Hare, Fort Lauderdale, Minneapolis, Myrtle Beach, and San Juan began. The year 2019 was a shakeup year. Six routes were cut, although Raleigh Durham was added and dropped eight months later. Frontier's Long Island network fell from 13 routes in 2018 to eight in 2019, returning to focus enormously on Florida.
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Frontier now has 43% of Long Island's capacity
Frontier's 2021 seat volume is very close to what it had in 2019, down as it is by just 5%. Under the circumstances, this is very good, although it says nothing of fares, loads, or financial performance. Clearly, this rebound is because nearly nine in ten of the ULCC's seats are to Florida, a state that has overall done well aviation-wise during the pandemic.
Together with cuts by Long Islands' other airlines American (-20%) and especially Southwest (-37%), this bounceback has pushed Frontier's share of the airport's seats to 43%, up from one-third in 2019.
Frontier has eight routes this year
Some eight routes are served from Long Island this year, two more than Southwest. Atlanta, Fort Myers, Miami, Myrtle Beach, Orlando, Tampa, and West Palm Beach exist, while Las Vegas will begin on November 18th.
At 2,282 miles, Las Vegas will be by far the longest route from the New York state airport. Frontier will use 186-seat A320neos and depart Long Beach at 10:00 on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. It'll return the same day at 21:58.
This won't be the first time that Sin City has existed non-stop. Southwest served it for years until 2010. In 2007, it had 184,000 non-stop seats and a twice-daily service, OAG data shows. Of course, demand remains high, with over 50,000 transit passengers in 2019, booking data indicates. This excludes leakage to JFK and LaGuardia, which would meaningfully grow the numbers.
How did Frontier's routes do in May?
The latest available information from the Department of Transportation's T-100 dataset is May 2021. Frontier had six routes that month with an average seat load factor of 75%, slightly under the carrier's system average of 79%. While some routes, as shown below, did very well by this measure – remember, it is just one element of performance – Miami, in particular, did not.
- West Palm Beach: 91%
- Fort Myers: 86%
- Tampa: 85%
- Myrtle Beach: 75%
- Orlando: 74%
- Miami: 39%
Have you flown from Long Island? If so, what were your experiences? Share them with us in the comments.