In doing my usual news snooping today, I have to admit — I saw the headline about Frontier moving into Memphis and I thought it was a joke. I had to pull up the story to make sure it wasn’t.
Today Frontier announced that it is going to start new service to Memphis in May. Flights will serve Denver, Orlando and Las Vegas.
Yikes.
As one reader wrote to us today, “Just how medieval is Northwest going to go on Frontier’s ass in responding to Frontier’s announcement of service from Memphis to Denver, Las Vegas and Orlando?”
No question, this is the most direct assault on Northwest out of Memphis by any competitor.
Personally — I’m still waiting for Southwest to announce its move into Minneapolis.
But in the meantime, do we have any comments from the peanut gallery out there on Frontier’s latest move?
Let me hear ’em. As always you can either email me or comment here.
It’s been understood by us Northwest employees that as part of the deal Northwest made when selling the ex-Midway airlines gates and facilities at Midway to Southwest was that Southwest agreed NOT to serve MSP. Of course now their code is on the ATA flights out of MSP. And since there is a bus service (the “Bette Bus”} dedicated to hauling passengers from Memphis to Nashville and Little Rock to get on Southwest there isn’t much incentive for Southwest to serve Memphis as they already get about 75% of the customers without having to fly an airplane here.
Ron Henning