To answer American's alliances with Alaska & JetBlue, should United set up an alliance or merge with Frontier Airlines ?

Frontier has an hub in Denver and focus cities in Atlanta, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Miami, Orlando, Philadelphia, Tampa and Trenton.
So, United will gain some footprint in ATL and MIA.
Otherwise, this proposal could support blocking AA/B6 alliance.

What do you think?

anair79 wrote:

To answer American's alliances with Alaska & JetBlue, should United set up an alliance or merge with Frontier Airlines ?

Frontier has an hub in Denver and focus cities in Atlanta, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Miami, Orlando, Philadelphia, Tampa and Trenton.
So, United will gain some footprint in ATL and MIA.
Otherwise, this proposal could support blocking AA/B6 alliance.

What do you think?

I think no.

It would dilute the hell out of United's brand, plus F9 is pretty tiny at ATL & MIA, not that UA wants more access to those markets anyway.

No.

1. Very different customer profile, network strategies, and cost structures

2. There would be anti consumer concerns about DEN

3. F9s rando dart board, less than daily, here again gone tomorrow route planning is the complete opposite of a legacy carrier like UA

AA & B6 are a lot more in common versus F9 and UA are at opposite ends.

UA elites and premium traffic are not going to fly on F9

I'm sorry but this is one of the most ridiculous ideas I've ever read on anet. United actually has more flights in ATL and MIA than F9 because most of F9 routes are 3-4x a week. A least an NK merger would give them an FLL "hub" - a merger with F9 gives UA nothing they don't have already.

To all those denigrating the OP on the topic of choice, as wild of a concept is, remember PE eventually folded into CO .

anair79 wrote:

To answer American's alliances with Alaska & JetBlue, should United set up an alliance or merge with Frontier Airlines ?

Frontier has an hub in Denver and focus cities in Atlanta, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Miami, Orlando, Philadelphia, Tampa and Trenton.
So, United will gain some footprint in ATL and MIA.
Otherwise, this proposal could support blocking AA/B6 alliance.

What do you think?

Suppose a F9 + UA combination did occur. Other than increasing its footprint in DEN, would you think UA would hang on to all those other focus markets with the day-of-week specific frequencies. That's now how the UA network is set up.

usflyer msp wrote:

United actually has more flights in ATL and MIA than F9 because most of F9 routes are 3-4x a week. A least an NK merger would give them an FLL "hub" - a merger with F9 gives UA nothing they don't have already.

F9 + NK combination always and continues to make more sense.

UA does not need to depend on another carrier for domestic codeshare feed.
Why?
Because unlike AA, UA has a strong distribution of hubs. EWR and IAD are the TATL gateways. ORD is the massive midwest hub. IAH serves the south. DEN serves as a gateway to the west coast. And SFO/LAX are the TPAC hubs.
AA cannot really say the same. Their only TPAC hub was LAX, which has too much competition and is geographically not in the best place. So that is why they are using SEA while depending on AS for connecting feed. In the NYC area, AA was struggling domestically against the other carriers. So that is why they decided to interline with B6 for domestic feed while focusing more on building an international hub for TATL flights. UA already has its own fortress hub at EWR.

Yes, AA has a massive Florida hub (MIA) as a gateway to Latin America, which UA severely lacks. But even then, I doubt that codesharing with F9 would solve that problem for them.

phatfarmlines wrote:

To all those denigrating the OP on the topic of choice, as wild of a concept is, remember PE eventually folded into CO

You’re talking about something wildly different that almost proved that merging a full-service carrier with an LCC is a terrible idea.

CO at the time was pretty different to UA, it called itself a ‘full-service, low-fare carrier’ and was essentially a look-a-like of what Alaska is today. PE was on its knees and urgently in need of a buyer, and was scooped up by Texas Air (CO’s former parent company, nice name!). The deal was done largely out of spite since PE’s founder Don Burr was the best mate of Frank Lorenzo (Texas Air/Continental boss), and the two became enemies when Burr left Texas Air to start PE. Once the deal was complete, Texas Air realised what a mess PE was financially. At the time, Texas Air also had the mess that was Eastern on its plate, and didn’t have the time or money to make PE viable, so it simply took PE’s EWR hub and old aircraft and gave them to CO. It was not a ‘merger’ or ‘alliance’, it was a parent company transferring assets from one subsidiary to another.

When CO first took over the EWR hub, it was an absolute shambles. Ex-PE staff had no idea how to use CO equipment, it’s all-economy aircraft were in a awful state and in no way compatible with CO’s somewhat high-class operation. They didn’t have onboard ovens or proper catering equipment so meals couldn’t be served, CO’s overall on time performance dropped to less than 50% due to the EWR chaos, and it went from declaring steady profits to one of the biggest losses ever seen in the industry at the time. CO didn’t have the greatest reputation at the time, but after the PE acquisition it became basically the worst airline in the US, even infrequent travellers would run a mile from it. The massive drop in revenue, plus the debts PE had racked up, is partially what led CO to bankruptcy in 1990.

F9 is no where near the state that PE was when CO took it over, and even if it was, trying to encourage loyal UA pax in F9’s plastic fixed-back seats would end in a disaster.

Little to no network benefit -- the United O'Hare hub would only benefit from being able to provide a thru-way to say Trenton on Frontier, which might come what, 3 or 4 times a week seasonally?

acavpics wrote:

UA does not need to depend on another carrier for domestic codeshare feed.
Why?
Because unlike AA, UA has a strong distribution of hubs. EWR and IAD are the TATL gateways. ORD is the massive midwest hub. IAH serves the south. DEN serves as a gateway to the west coast. And SFO/LAX are the TPAC hubs.
AA cannot really say the same. Their only TPAC hub was LAX, which has too much competition and is geographically not in the best place. So that is why they are using SEA while depending on AS for connecting feed. In the NYC area, AA was struggling domestically against the other carriers. So that is why they decided to interline with B6 for domestic feed while focusing more on building an international hub for TATL flights. UA already has its own fortress hub at EWR.

Yes, AA has a massive Florida hub (MIA) as a gateway to Latin America, which UA severely lacks. But even then, I doubt that codesharing with F9 would solve that problem for them.

UAs Latin hub is IAH. Which is definitely not "severely lacking" compared to MIA.

TexasAirCorp wrote:

phatfarmlines wrote:

To all those denigrating the OP on the topic of choice, as wild of a concept is, remember PE eventually folded into CO

You’re talking about something wildly different that almost proved that merging a full-service carrier with an LCC is a terrible idea.

CO at the time was pretty different to UA, it called itself a ‘full-service, low-fare carrier’ and was essentially a look-a-like of what Alaska is today. PE was on its knees and urgently in need of a buyer, and was scooped up by Texas Air (CO’s former parent company, nice name!). The deal was done largely out of spite since PE’s founder Don Burr was the best mate of Frank Lorenzo (Texas Air/Continental boss), and the two became enemies when Burr left Texas Air to start PE. Once the deal was complete, Texas Air realised what a mess PE was financially. At the time, Texas Air also had the mess that was Eastern on its plate, and didn’t have the time or money to make PE viable, so it simply took PE’s EWR hub and old aircraft and gave them to CO. It was not a ‘merger’ or ‘alliance’, it was a parent company transferring assets from one subsidiary to another.

When CO first took over the EWR hub, it was an absolute shambles. Ex-PE staff had no idea how to use CO equipment, it’s all-economy aircraft were in a awful state and in no way compatible with CO’s somewhat high-class operation. They didn’t have onboard ovens or proper catering equipment so meals couldn’t be served, CO’s overall on time performance dropped to less than 50% due to the EWR chaos, and it went from declaring steady profits to one of the biggest losses ever seen in the industry at the time. CO didn’t have the greatest reputation at the time, but after the PE acquisition it became basically the worst airline in the US, even infrequent travellers would run a mile from it. The massive drop in revenue, plus the debts PE had racked up, is partially what led CO to bankruptcy in 1990.

F9 is no where near the state that PE was when CO took it over, and even if it was, trying to encourage loyal UA pax in F9’s plastic fixed-back seats would end in a disaster.

I'm not suggesting a F9 + UA makes sense; in my mind it doesn't. But I wanted to highlight that precedent of this business transaction has occurred, and while the post-merger CO/PE was rocky, we can't deny that EWR became a rather strategic cornerstone in the CO network, fulfilled to its potential under Bethune.

I honestly don’t have any idea what the world let alone the Airline Industry is going to look like in the next few years. I will say that no one truly knows what will happen despite what they say. I couldn’t have imagined a global pandemic taking the world economy down for two years and going. I didn’t think eastern Europe would be on the brink of the first land war since WWII. I’ve given up trying to guess what the industry will look like in the future. With worldwide runaway inflation on the horizon, I don’t think any future combination that ends up saving the industry from collapsing under it’s crushing debt will be completely out of the question. Sorry for the rather deep philosophical discussion, but you have to admit that the last few years have been anything but normal and predictable, especially the Airline Industry. Good luck to us all.

Forget what UA would gain out of this or anything. Why would Frontier/Indigo want to do this? It would just expose them to all the costs and headaches that they've deliberately avoided for the best part of a decade.