Brent Pin­heiro

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

With com­plaints of high re­gion­al air­fares through­out the Caribbean, Fron­tier Air­lines is on a mis­sion: to get peo­ple in the air at the low­est price pos­si­ble. And that’s how Fron­tier has plans to es­tab­lish it­self – in un­der­served and over­priced mar­kets.

With six North Amer­i­can routes out of Trinidad’s Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, T&T is not ex­act­ly un­der­served. Over­priced? That would de­pend on who you talk to as T&T has some of the low­est tax­es and fees in the re­gion.

But on Ju­ly 11, Den­ver-based Fron­tier Air­lines plans to rein­tro­duce ul­tra-low-cost trav­el to T&T, a con­cept un­fa­mil­iar to some. It’s where you, the pas­sen­ger, con­trol the fi­nal tick­et price.

This won’t be the first time an ul­tra-low cost car­ri­er has op­er­at­ed in the coun­try though. In 2008, Flori­da-based car­ri­er Spir­it Air­lines be­gan op­er­at­ing flights be­tween Port-of-Spain and Fort Laud­erdale. That didn’t last very long. Spir­it shut down the ser­vice short­ly af­ter, leav­ing be­hind a mar­ket most­ly served by full-ser­vice car­ri­ers.

In 2023, at the Routes con­fer­ence in Chica­go, a gov­ern­ment team, led by the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T (AATT), ap­proached Fron­tier to ser­vice T&T in 2024. Ac­cord­ing to Fer­nan­do Vazquez, Fron­tier’s re­gion­al man­ag­er for field mar­ket­ing and in­ter­na­tion­al sales, the de­ci­sion was an easy one.

“We be­lieve the time is right to in­tro­duce this ser­vice. Fron­tier of­fers great val­ue with the ser­vice con­nect­ing to our ma­jor op­er­a­tional base in San Juan (SJU). We are con­fi­dent that it will be suc­cess­ful.” says Vazquez.

The air­line in­tends to op­er­ate di­rect flights to/from Puer­to Ri­co, and de­spite hav­ing dif­fer­ent tar­get mar­kets, will di­rect­ly com­pete with lo­cal car­ri­er Caribbean Air­lines (CAL). CAL ini­tial­ly planned to op­er­ate flights to Puer­to Ri­co via Bar­ba­dos but lat­er ad­just­ed its sched­ule, drop­ping the Bar­ba­dos leg and re­tim­ing the flights.

De­spite Fron­tier need­ing to fill a min­i­mum of 680+ seats week­ly com­pared to CAL’s just over 400, Vazquez is not wor­ried.

Un­like CAL’s ser­vice, which ter­mi­nates in San Juan, Fron­tier of­fers con­nec­tions to over 25 des­ti­na­tions from SJU, sev­er­al on the US main­land in­clud­ing New York, Dal­las, Philadel­phia, and Tam­pa.

For trav­ellers, this means skip­ping tra­di­tion­al con­nec­tion gate­ways like Mi­a­mi In­ter­na­tion­al, which has suf­fered con­ges­tion is­sues in re­cent times spark­ing com­plaints from irate fly­ers.

Puer­to Ri­co as a hub has seen re­newed in­ter­est with over 4.9 mil­lion pas­sen­gers pass­ing through Luis Muñoz Marín In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port’s doors in 2023. In May Grupo Aero­por­tu­ario del Sureste (ASUR), the Mex­i­co-based in­ter­na­tion­al air­port group that op­er­ates SJU through lo­cal com­pa­ny Aerostar, re­port­ed that pas­sen­ger traf­fic was up 4.3 per cent com­pared to last May with 1,136,672 pas­sen­gers trav­el­ling in­ter­na­tion­al­ly and do­mes­ti­cal­ly.

Once the strong­hold of Amer­i­can Ea­gle, the re­gion­al branch of Amer­i­can Air­lines, both Jet­Blue and Fron­tier have an­nounced in­ten­tions to open crew bases at Luis Muñoz Marín In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

Ac­cord­ing to a Fron­tier state­ment, their base would em­ploy up to 90 pi­lots, 200 flight at­ten­dants, and sev­er­al air­port and main­te­nance work­ers with a pro­ject­ed US$84 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly in lo­cal wages.

T&T will not see that lev­el of in­vest­ment, but the re­gion stands to ben­e­fit as a whole. Ac­cord­ing to the In­ter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port As­so­ci­a­tion (IA­TA), a trade as­so­ci­a­tion of the world’s air­lines, air trans­port is a sig­nif­i­cant dri­ver of re­gion­al eco­nom­ic growth, gen­er­at­ing US$156 bil­lion of GDP in Latin Amer­i­ca & the Caribbean.

Ul­tra-low-cost car­ri­ers promise low fares to the price-sen­si­tive, no-frills pas­sen­ger. Top low-cost Eu­ro­pean car­ri­ers such as Ryanair and Wizz Air keep costs low by, among many oth­er things, op­er­at­ing one air­craft fam­i­ly and charg­ing for all an­cil­lary ser­vices in­clud­ing seat se­lec­tion and bag­gage.

Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary even once float­ed the idea of charg­ing to use the toi­let and hav­ing stand­ing-on­ly ar­eas on the plane. Those plans nev­er saw the light of day, but Ryanair still man­ages to of­fer flights from as lit­tle as €12.99 or $95.

Fron­tier op­er­ates with a sim­i­lar mod­el to its Eu­ro­pean coun­ter­parts; a ba­sic tick­et gets you a seat on the plane with on­ly a per­son­al item. But if you want a say in where you sit, car­ry a piece of car­ry-on lug­gage, check bag­gage, or even get a print­ed board­ing pass then pre­pare to fork over the cash.

Even the on­board ex­pe­ri­ence is no frills, seats don’t re­cline, there’s no in­flight en­ter­tain­ment or WiFi, and the air­line op­er­ates a cred­it card on­ly buy-on-board ser­vice mean­ing there’s no such thing as a free meal. There is the op­tion of a free cup of wa­ter, but you’ll have to re­quest it.

Still, Vazquez says fliers are hap­py to ac­cept the lim­i­ta­tions be­cause it trans­lates to low­er fares.

“If you’re fly­ing and you don’t mind be­ing seat­ed in any seat, then you don’t have to pay for that. You just pay for the bag­gage, for the car­ry-on or, what­ev­er is most con­ve­nient for you. We all like to save some mon­ey. Es­pe­cial­ly if you want to save some mon­ey and prob­a­bly spend it on a great din­ner. So in­stead of pay­ing X amount for pre­mi­um on an­oth­er air­line, you will go with us and prob­a­bly have a big­ger din­ner.”

And with one of the youngest fleets of all North Amer­i­can car­ri­ers, Vazquez says their fu­el bill is about 43 per cent less than the com­pe­ti­tion. Those sav­ings too are passed on to the cus­tomers.

Ac­cord­ing to the 2023-24 Amer­i­can Cus­tomer Sat­is­fac­tion In­dex (AC­SI), Fron­tier ranked 9th on the list with a score of 69, up by just two points from the pre­vi­ous year. In tenth and last po­si­tion, Spir­it Air­lines. But ac­cord­ing to Vazquez, the air­line is mak­ing sure that its fleet of Air­bus air­craft is safe and de­pend­able, and the crew makes pas­sen­gers feel at home at 40,000 feet.

To at­tract busi­ness trav­ellers as well as the vis­it­ing friends and rel­a­tives (VFR) mar­ket to fly one or more of their routes across the con­ti­nen­tal US, Mex­i­co, Latin Amer­i­ca, and the Caribbean, Fron­tier has in­tro­duced a slew of changes to its prod­uct of­fer­ing. This in­cludes three new pric­ing bun­dles that promise more trans­paren­cy, flex­i­bil­i­ty with no change fees, and a ‘“for less” price guar­an­tee.

These changes may en­hance the ap­peal of fly­ing an ul­tra-low-cost car­ri­er, but this kind of trav­el cer­tain­ly isn’t for every­one. On­ly time will tell if no­to­ri­ous­ly “cham­pagne taste but mau­by pock­et” Trin­bag­o­ni­ans are ready to once again em­brace the ul­tra-low cost ex­pe­ri­ence.