image: Airbus
Frontier Airlines is facing ‘interesting times.’ It no longer has to compete with Spirit Airlines, which drove fares down. In its ULCC category, it now competes with Allegiant. Allegiant, after acquiring Sun Country, is growing. And it is deploying a growing fleet of disruptive 737 MAX 8-200s. Then, to keep things interesting, the majors keep pulling premium traffic away. Then Avelo and Breeze come along, leaving no market uncontested.
Frontier’s success depends, as always, on producing seats cheaper than anyone else. As part of this, the airline has switched engines from CFM LEAP to Pratt & Whitney GTF on new deliveries. It has returned several early A320neos that had LEAP engines. This was very interesting, as these A320s were not the oldest in their fleet. The table lists operations through June 2026.
Let’s dig into the data to better understand what’s going on. Has the engine switch made an impact?
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