As a reader just pointed out to me in a note — I left out a very important adjunct to the Jeff Potter departure story.

Frontier Chairman Sam Addoms announced just a few days ago that he was retiring as Chairman of the Board “to spend more time in his community.”

A couple of comments. One, you will not find a more decent human being than Sam Addoms. This industry is not good enough for him.

Second, Jeff Potter is one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet  — but I just don’t think he had the experience going into the position he needed to enable him to grow with the airline.

As a Frontier pilot who I have known for a long time wrote to me not long ago, “You know he’s a wonderful guy, but we don’t have faith in Jeff to take us where we need to go, Sam is  “out of touch” with what is going on at the airline, and we don’t have much use for [CFO] Paul [Tate]. So — we figure if the airline is going to survive, our future is going to have to include a merger. Somehow. Someway.”

Have to admit. It’s very unusual for the two top airline guys to leave at the same time.

It’s quite possible there is finally something bigger going on here. But who would want to go into Denver with the situation that exists there now with Southwest and United Airlines?

Let the rumors begin.

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