{"id":114266,"date":"2015-03-02T18:36:35","date_gmt":"2015-03-03T01:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/frontier-cuts-all-service-to-durango\/"},"modified":"2015-03-02T18:36:35","modified_gmt":"2015-03-03T01:36:35","slug":"frontier-cuts-all-service-to-durango","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/frontier-cuts-all-service-to-durango\/","title":{"rendered":"Frontier cuts all service to Durango"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A
A Frontier Airlines A319 aircraft takes off from Durango-La Plata County Airport in 2013 with service to Denver. The airline will not resume its seasonal route from Durango to Denver this summer.<\/span>SHAUN STANLEY\/Durango Herald file photo<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhile we\u2019re disappointed in Frontier\u2019s announcement of cancellation for this summer, we\u2019re pleased to have recently secured a third American Airlines flight from Dallas that will provide more flight time choices for locals and visitors and increase flight market connecting options,\u201d said Kip Turner, director of aviation for Durango-La Plata County Airport, in a news release.<\/p>\n

The move by Frontier, which has laid off workers in Denver and canceled routes throughout its service area in recent months, comes at an awkward time. Some public officials are pushing to overhaul the airport\u2019s terminal building at a cost of $80 million or more.<\/p>\n

Turner said the Durango airport will offer 7 percent more seats this summer than last. That\u2019s because of an additional American Airlines flight to Dallas and more capacity on US Airways\u2019 route to Phoenix and United\u2019s Denver flights.<\/p>\n

Frontier most recently operated the Durango route in October. Frontier had planned flights to Durango only three days per week during summer, when the airport attracts heavy tourist traffic. The airline\u2019s passenger load was significantly lower than that of United\u2019s daily route to Denver.<\/p>\n

Frontier Airlines did not immediately respond to a phone call and email message requesting comment after business hours Friday.<\/p>\n

Some local officials have said Frontier\u2019s low-cost model benefited other customers by keeping ticket prices low.<\/p>\n

Mayor Sweetie Marbury said she hadn\u2019t counted on Frontier since it reduced its schedule.<\/p>\n

Marbury said she was unsure how Frontier\u2019s cancellation would affect the airport debate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will be up to the voters,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m not a supporter of a brand-new airport. It\u2019s financially too expensive. Yes, we need to do some improvements, but I do not support building a new airport from the ground up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turned said efforts continue to woo additional flights. Business leaders have long pined for direct flights to destinations such as Houston and Chicago.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe regularly converse with all the airlines about air-service capacity,\u201d Turner said. \u201cWe will include Frontier\u2019s decision in these conversations as it could influence the capacity decisions of American, United and US Airways, possibly leading to more flights or larger aircraft from some or all of these carriers. We had very high flight load factors last summer which we feel justify an even larger capacity increase than our current 7 percent (projected growth) at Durango this summer, and we\u2019re doing everything we can to acquire more flights and air seats.\u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Frontier Airlines A319 aircraft takes off from Durango-La Plata County Airport in 2013 with service to Denver. The airline will not resume its seasonal route from Durango to Denver this summer.SHAUN STANLEY\/Durango Herald file photo \u201cWhile we\u2019re disappointed in Frontier\u2019s announcement of cancellation for this summer, we\u2019re pleased to have recently secured a third […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":114267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5742,5735],"tags":[916,915,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-114266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-news","tag-air-transport","tag-durango-la-plata-county-airport","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=114266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/114266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=114266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=114266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=114266"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=114266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}