Frontier Airlines was auctioned off this week to Republic Airways.
Coincidentally, I today picked up a stack of “Colorado Wonderland” magazines dated 1950 to 1955. The magazine is all about promoting tourism in Colorado, promising a minimum of 6 natural color photos in each issue. Plus, there are ads for 3, that is, THREE! different passenger rail carriers for Colorado in almost every issue too. There’s a lot of excitement about the all-concrete Boulder to Denver turnpike. And the state engineer is hinting we’d make a great east/west route for the new transcontinental highway. But that’s all for later.
Today, let’s take a moment for Frontier:
This May 1950 map shows all the airlines operating out of Colorado: Braniff, Challenger, Continental, Monarch, United, and Western Air.
The following month, June1950, Challenger and Monarch would merge with a third airline to become Frontier. Here are the ads of the day:
1952
1953
I love the old ads!
I didn’t realize that Frontier had been around so long. I don’t think it hit my radar until the animals were introduced.
Rob has been flying with Frontier almost every week of the year for the past 5 years and we decided that if Southwest won the bid then we’d have to find a new airline. (He prefers aisle seats, but you can’t pre-select seats with Southwest.)
Ironically, despite the fact that Southwest didn’t win the bid, we still have to look for an alternative airline because they’ve canceled Rob’s usual Thursday night flight come mid-September. So he may be traveling with United for awhile until Frontier reinstates that flight.
Thanks Meg! So, it sounds like United is your very last choice? No matter what happens? Is that what you’re implying?
Frontier has worked really well and we’re sad to have to find something else. Rob says that in general, the flight staff are much happier on his Frontier flights than on any other airline that he’s flown with. And since he has summit status (the highest level in the frequent flier program) he gets all sorts of perks like free TV and beer. He appreciates that and it’s sort of a blow to get knocked back down to normal Joe Schmoe if he flies another airline (whose frequent flier miles don’t give as many perks even if he did start collecting enough miles to hit the top of their programs).
When you fly every single week you really don’t want it to suck. He’s got a routine and perks with Frontier. It’s just more stressful flying with anyone else. But if Frontier is going to cancel his flight for the winter, there’s not much else we can do. This has happened before but there was a flight 2 hours earlier that he could switch to. This time they’ve canceled that as well. :-\
Frontier had for a long time not been the airline it used to be.
I once got to fly Swiss air. It was a 1/2 hour flight between Stuttgart and Zurich. In that half hour I got chocolates, newspaper, drinks, hot towel service. The plane was small and bumpy, but who cares. I think Swiss air should take over DIA.