A Frontier spokesman said the move to drop Bradley had more to do with economics and the cost of jet fuel than demand for flights to and from Hartford.
A Frontier Airlines jet taxis on the runway at New York's La Guardia Airport.By HARLAN LEVY
WINDSOR LOCKS, Conn. – Frontier Airlines has announced that it will cease operating from Bradley International Airport on Sept. 11.
The announcement comes a year after Frontier started offering twice-a-day, nonstop round-trip flights to Milwaukee on weekdays and one such flight each Saturday and Sunday.
“It’s not anything to do with what the folks in the greater Hartford area have done wrong,” Frontier Communications Director Peter Kowalchuk said. “This has to do strictly with the economics that exists today because of the very high cost of fuel and the escalating cost of jet fuel.”
Frontier has “very good load factors” on the Milwaukee flights, according to Kowalchuk.
“The issue is that the flight is 2 1/2 hours and burns a great deal of fuel, and the loads that we are seeing and the prices that we are able to charge in that market do not allow us to make up for the cost of fuel," he said.
Denver-based Frontier serviced Bradley from March 2007 until September 2008, when the company declared bankruptcy “mainly because of fuel prices,” Kowalchuk said. Indianapolis-based Republic Airways acquired Frontier in October 2009 as well as Midwest Airlines, which had provided daily round-trips from Bradley to Milwaukee until August 2008. The new Republic subsidiary Frontier started at Bradley with the Milwaukee runs in September 2010.
As for the effect on Bradley’s passenger traffic, the airline’s market share at Bradley is small.
“It’s less than 1 percent of our passenger numbers,” Bradley Communications Director John Wallace said. “We’re still up 8 percent from May 2010 to May this year, and we’re up 9 percent for the year in 2011 over 2010.”
However, the addition of the Milwaukee flights was cited by a consultant earlier this year as one of the factors contributing to the growing number of passengers using Bradley. And Frontier may return to Bradley, Kowalchuk said.
“We love the Hartford market,” he said. “We feel that it’s a very good market in its position between New York and Boston, and we will continue to evaluate the airport.”
In a move that might prove significant for Bradley, Republic announced Wednesday that it has agreed to buy 80 new fuel-efficient Airbus Industrie jets for Frontier. The A320neo jets use 15 percent less fuel than Frontier’s current fleet of 58 Airbus A318, A319, and A320 aircraft.
“So it’s conceivable that some point in the future we might be able to re-enter the Hartford market on a more consistent and permanent basis,” Kowalchuk said.