{"id":39762,"date":"2022-06-29T01:40:46","date_gmt":"2022-06-29T07:40:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/frontier-airlines-again-pulling-services-from-durango-la-plata-airport\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:51:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:51:36","slug":"frontier-airlines-again-pulling-services-from-durango-la-plata-airport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/frontier-airlines-again-pulling-services-from-durango-la-plata-airport\/","title":{"rendered":"Frontier Airlines again pulling services from Durango-La Plata Airport"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A Frontier Airlines ground crew waves to a Frontier flight at Durango-La Plata County Airport. Durango announced Tuesday that Frontier flight services are again leaving Durango in August after returning in early June. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Frontier Airlines will cease operations at Durango-La Plata Airport in August, the latest chapter in the airline\u2019s on-again, off-again commitment to serving DRO.<\/p>\n

The airline will continue twice weekly service between Durango and Denver and Durango and Las Vegas through Aug. 7, according to news release from the city of Durango. After that, it will discontinue serving Durango.<\/p>\n

Tony Vicari, director of aviation at DRO, said Frontier\u2019s decision to end flight services is \u201cdisappointing\u201d because it reduces options for flyers, but it accounts for only about 5%, or 2,585 passengers, of the airport\u2019s annual traffic.<\/p>\n

In 2021, DRO had record-breaking flight traffic with 397,293 total flight passengers who arrived or departed from the airport.<\/p>\n

Vicari said there just wasn\u2019t a strong market demand for Frontier\u2019s air service. So, it has decided to allocate its resources into markets where there is more support for the airline.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, our air services are 100% market-driven,\u201d he said. \u201cNothing here is subsidized or underwritten in any kind of way that would prop up poor-performing service.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frontier\u2019s history at DRO<\/div>\n

\"A
A Frontier Airlines aircraft flying over Gloster City, N.J., approaches Philadelphia International Airport, Oct. 22. Frontier announced it is pulling services from Durango-La Plata County Airport in August, said Tony Vicari, director of aviation at DRO. (Matt Rourke\/Associated Press file)<\/span>onset<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Frontier initially left DRO in the late fall 2014 and didn\u2019t return to service the airport until early June 2021, Vicari said.<\/p>\n

Then, it offered twice-weekly flights between Durango and Las Vegas from June until March 5. The airline suddenly announced in February it was canceling the flight. At the time, much like now, Vicari said demand wasn\u2019t robust enough to support the Las Vegas flights.<\/p>\n

But the Durango-Las Vegas flights were reinstated on June 9. Nineteen days later, the airline announced it is pulling out of DRO.<\/p>\n

He said Frontier is \u201can ultra low-cost carrier\u201d with a \u201cmore nimble business model\u201d than larger airlines such as American Airlines and United Airlines, which share the bulk of Durango\u2019s flight traffic.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so you do see the ultra low-cost carriers, a la Frontier, make a lot more entries and exits in the market and quick decisions as they are sort of chasing the specific niche of the business model there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

While Frontier is much more likely to re-enter the DRO market on shorter notice than other, larger carriers, Vicari takes Frontier\u2019s decision to fully exit the airport and shut down ground assets and staff member training as a sign the airline isn\u2019t likely to resume services in the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think, realistically, it\u2019s going to be much more about a long-term, potentially multiyear-type play before they re-enter the market,\u201d he said. \u201cNever say never, because it\u2019s a quickly evolving industry right now. There are a lot of weird changes in the world. But for now, I don\u2019t envision any kind of imminent return.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frontier employees have options at DRO<\/div>\n

\"The
The Frontier Airlines check-in at the Durango-La Plata County Airport sits empty on March 19. The airport started services again on June 9, but just 19 days later, the city of Durango announced the airline was ending all DRO flights, ending twice weekly flights to Denver and Las Vegas. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Vicari said staff members who handled ground work for Frontier at DRO have options to transition to other entities, including other airlines that service the airport. Ground work for Frontier is provided by Av Flight, a fixed entity at the airport that provides fueling and general aviation services in addition to other contract work.<\/p>\n

He said airlines typically contract out to entities such as Av Flight for ground services.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo in this case, they didn\u2019t hire additional people to work those (Frontier) flights,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Vicari expects a number of staff members to remain with Av Flight in another capacity.<\/p>\n

\u201cHopefully, it\u2019s a soft landing for many of those individuals,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd for those that might not stick with Av Flight there\u2019s other hiring opportunities with other entities here at the airport. So hopefully we\u2019ll see them (spread) across the different employers here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the airport\u2019s disappointment in Frontier\u2019s scheduled departure, Vicari said DRO still has \u201ccomparatively strong\u201d air service through American and United airlines, which offer daily connections to Denver, Dallas and Phoenix.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe remain pretty confident in our route network and that it\u2019ll continue to strongly serve the community,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Passenger traffic at the airport has returned to pre-pandemic levels, matching 2019 numbers closely, Vicari said. He said DRO is in a \u201creasonably good\u201d position considering other markets across the country are struggling, particularly airports where business and international flights are the primary reasons for travel, such as in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.<\/p>\n

Continuing COVID-19 restrictions have affected international flight traffic while virtual business meetings have cut into the need for businesspeople to travel as frequently, he said. But, at least at DRO, business travel has had a \u201csharp uptick\u201d this year and could continue to rise.<\/p>\n

cburney@durangoherald<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Ultra low-cost carrier\u2019 has history of starting, stopping service at DRO<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1978,364,915,28,475],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-39762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-airlines","tag-community","tag-durango-la-plata-county-airport","tag-headlines","tag-la-plata-county-colorado"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39762","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=39762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84437,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39762\/revisions\/84437"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39762"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=39762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}