Frontier Airlines to end all service out of Colorado Springs

Frontier Airlines will end all service to Colorado Springs in early April, reversing a decision a month ago to continue nonstop flights to Los Angeles and Phoenix while halting service to Denver, San Diego and Orlando, Fla.

The Denver-based carrier will end flights to Los Angeles on March 2 and to Phoenix on April 7, the only two cities Frontier said last month that it planned to continue serving after ending service to San Diego on Thursday, Orlando on Feb. 25 and Denver on March 2. Frontier’s exit ends nearly five years of operation in the Springs that peaked last year with nonstop flights to five cities that had vaulted Frontier to the second-largest carrier at the Colorado Springs Airport in five of the six months between June and November.

Kate O’Malley, a Frontier spokeswoman in Denver, said Friday that bookings to Los Angeles and Phoenix had deteriorated since the carrier announced the cutbacks to Denver, San Diego and Orlando, “and we were left with no responsible choice but to terminate the service.”

“We are clearly disappointed that Frontier was not able to sustain service in the Colorado Springs market. We had been advised by Frontier that the Phoenix service was strong and the Los Angeles service was strong enough to continue building, but the airline has other priorities where it wants to build service,” said Mark Earle, the city’s aviation director. “Our role is to find other carriers to fill the demand that we know exists in Colorado Springs, and the recently announced merger between American Airlines and U.S. Airways is a great opportunity to do that.”

Earle said airport officials already are in contact with American to regain flights to Phoenix, a hub American will acquire when it completes a merger announced Thursday with U.S. Airways. U.S. Airways ended service in 2010 to Colorado Springs, where it had operated nonstop flights to Phoenix since 2005. American also operates a hub in Los Angeles and had service between there and the Springs between 1999 and 2003.

“With the merger of the two carriers, there will be more options to travel out of Phoenix than there is now with just U.S. Airways. We are hopeful that we will be able to regain service to Phoenix after the merger is completed and perhaps add service to Los Angeles as well,” Earle said.

Frontier carried 139,724 passengers leaving the Springs airport in the first 11 months of last year, or 19 percent of the airport’s passenger traffic for the period. The carrier had made Colorado Springs a “focus city” in May, expanding its schedule from daily flights to Denver by adding nonstop service to Los Angeles and Phoenix as year-around destinations and Portland and Seattle as summer destinations. Frontier replaced Portland with San Diego in September and Seattle with Orlando in November as winter destinations.

That ambitious expansion unraveled in the fall, when bookings started to decline and the carrier had to discount fares more than anticipated to fill the 138-seat aircraft it used for the Springs flights. Frontier, meanwhile, said it was halting flights between the Springs and Denver because it is phasing out the regional jets used on the route.

Frontier’s exit leaves the Springs with service from four airlines: Allegiant Air to Las Vegas, American to Dallas-Fort Worth, Delta Air Lines to Atlanta and Salt Lake City and United Airlines to Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.
 
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