In June, Denver-based Frontier Airlines (FRON) opened a new hub and launched several new routes to the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico.
Competitor JetBlue Airways (JBLU) had also announced earlier in the year that it was seeing potential in travel to and from the island and would seriously increase its number of routes there.
Some of the new JetBlue routes include flights between Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport (SJU) in San Juan and Charlotte, Boston, Fort Lauderdale and Virginia’s Norfolk. A few months later, Frontier followed with a new intra-Caribbean flight between San Juan and V.C. Bird International Airport (ANU) in Antigua and Barbuda.
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Puerto Rico is a popular vacation destination for those coming from the mainland U.S.
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These routes are the victims of Frontier’s latest cost-cutting
That said, such a strong focus on just one particular island is inherently risky. Last week, industry watchdog Ishrion Aviation revealed that the preliminary schedule that Frontier posted for the spring of 2025 includes cuts to flights between San Juan and Charlotte and Dallas Fort-Worth.
The route cuts, which Ishrion posted on the social media platform BlueSKy and were later confirmed by the airline itself, also include more than 40 domestic route cuts between cities such as Dallas and Jacksonville, Omaha and St. Louis as well as Frontier’s Denver hub and Columbus, LaGuardia Airport in New York City and Syracuse in the upper part of the state.
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Another city seeing a large number of cuts is Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport (ATL). By the start of the spring, existing flights to the city from New York’s Islip, Michigan’s Grand Rapids, Minneapolis-St. Paul and New Orleans will be retired with no announced return date.
While Frontier has not yet announced the exact dates some of these flights will fly for the last time, the schedule the airline filed with airport authorities is for between the start of 2025 and April.
Related: Frontier Airlines makes a big change many travelers will like
This is what’s happening with Frontier; some cuts and new routes
While the number of cuts announced this time is quite high, low-cost airlines tend to make bigger shake-ups to their networks when certain routes are not bringing in the necessary traffic.
Last month, Frontier also announced 16 new flights to mostly sunny destinations such as Orlando, Miami and Austin-Bergstrom International Airport (AUS). Even with the city seeing a dip in interest from the last few years, Frontier committed to starting new flights there from Chicago, Orlando, Cincinnati and Phoenix in March 2025.
As part of the latest shake-up, it is focusing on larger cities in warmer states rather than smaller destinations with observed spikes in traveler numbers. Some more new flights announced in November include flights to Tampa International Airport (TPA) from Houston, Indianapolis and Milwaukee.
“One of the largest challenges many low-cost and ultra-low-cost carriers faced in 2023 was the industry’s oversupply of capacity in leisure markets, with Las Vegas and Orlando being two significant examples,” Frontier CEO Barry Biffle told investors when a similar round of cuts was announced last February. “Both markets have experienced rapid and disproportionate growth compared to 2019, when demand and capacity were far more balanced.”
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