Year 1 of Frontier Airlines Service at Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport

Year 1 of Frontier Service at Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport
September 8, 2019
By: Michael Gutta

On September 8th, 2018 Frontier Airlines began service at Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport (GSP) as the first new airline to the airport since Southwest in 2011. So, for today’s 1-year anniversary of the start of service, I’ve decided to look back at the available passenger data to the 4 destinations served: Denver, Las Vegas, Orlando, and Tampa. Since the publicly available data published in T-100 forms lags by several months, only data through May has been made available covering the first 9 months of service. This blog is an overview of the service including total passenger numbers, a breakdown by destination city, and some developments that may affect service moving forward. As usual, all numbers are for departing passengers only (from GSP), so the total passenger numbers flying Frontier through Greenville-Spartanburg would be approximately double.

Frontier Airlines N326FR Airbus A320neo "Skye the Blue Jay" landing at Tampa International (Michael Gutta).

In the first nine months of Frontier Airlines’ service at GSP, just over thirty thousand passengers departed aboard 215 flights with just under forty thousand available seats. The average load factor was a respectable 77.0%, which isn’t bad considering this is the launch of service, it’s an Ultra-Low-Cost Carrier (ULCC), and the time period covered the less popular winter months. The nine months of data is tricky to annualize for several reasons: 1) Frontier changes the number of weekly flights on each route mostly without announcement, 2) Frontier offers some routes as “seasonal” without well-announced start and stop dates, and 3) Frontier began service after the busy summer 2018 travel season and the available data stopped before the busy summer 2019 travel season. Most leisure routes show the greatest demand over spring break and summer months, and I would classify all 4 of Frontier’s destinations from GSP as leisure destinations. Given these conditions, a conservative estimate of the total two-way number of passengers traveling on Frontier Airlines through GSP is over eighty thousand.


After looking at the monthly breakdown of service I looked at a destination breakdown for the 9 months of data. Unsurprisingly, Denver was the best performing destination, with over twice as many passengers on nearly twice as many departures as the other routes. Denver also sported the highest load factor, at an 83.5% average. The other three destinations all received exactly 44 departures. Las Vegas and Orlando performed comparably, with a similar number of passengers and load factors in the mid-70’s. Tampa service lagged the others with an average load factor of 66.3%.


After seeing the totals by destination, I wanted to look at the seasonality by destination since all of the routes were not served over the entire period. Denver was the only destination to maintain service throughout the entire 9-month period. A direct comparison of the destinations is not entirely fair, as service to Tampa was only offered during the less desirable winter months. Additionally, service to both Orlando and Tampa face competition with Allegiant Air, so competitor pricing and service volume could adversely affect each destination. Allegiant Air has also been offering service from GSP to Florida much longer (since 2006) so the customer base is likely aware of service even with little advertising.


Frontier Airlines service at Greenville-Spartanburg is interesting, and also difficult to forecast, for several reasons. At launch, the service to Tampa (TPA) and Orlando (MCO) competed with Allegiant Air service to nearby St. Petersburg-Clearwater (PIE) and Orlando-Sanford (SFB), respectively. While Denver and Las Vegas originally had no competition, United Airlines launched once-daily service to Denver on an ERJ-175 regional jet on June 7, 2019. The Las Vegas route faces no competition, but Las Vegas is the hub and headquarters of Allegiant Air, and with the route performing well Allegiant may decide to enter the market.

The Orlando service seems to no longer be seasonal, as it is offered through the latest schedules to March 2020. The Las Vegas route appears to still be seasonal, with service ending in mid-November 2019. Tampa is not currently shown in Frontier’s schedules through March 2020, though the route is still listed on both GSP and TPA’s websites. Lastly, the Denver route was performing very well for Frontier, but it will be interesting to see how it performs with competition.

As for expanded service, a quick review of the top 10 cities in Frontier’s network doesn’t reveal any blatantly obvious candidates, with 4 of those already being served. Philadelphia, Atlanta, and Chicago already have service from GSP on other airlines. That leaves Austin, Cincinnati, and Cleveland as unopposed, unserved destinations from GSP. Austin would be very intriguing as it is a rapidly growing leisure destination. Cincinnati and Cleveland don’t seem likely, though both were previously served at GSP by Delta Connection and Continental/United Express. With service competition on 3 out of 4 routes offered out of GSP and Frontier having a reputation for quickly changing route offerings, it seems more changes could be on the way in Year 2.

Let me know your thoughts on this blog post and potential future topics involving Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport, Frontier Airlines or anything aviation related. As a couple of side-notes, Frontier advertised their flight on August 6, 2019 from Denver to Greenville as the “greenest flight in the world” as it was aboard a fuel-efficient A320neo and terminated in Greenville. And finally, I flew aboard one segment covered in this discussion on flight 2514 from Tampa to Greenville on March 11, 2019 aboard an A320 named “Ozzy the Orca.” Read more about this route at the links below:

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