Frontier Airlines raised eyebrows three years ago when they said they didn’t want to use jet bridges anymore at their home base in Denver. Now they say they want to move “as close to 100% ground loading as possible” across all of their airports over the next few years, calling jet bridges “the kiss of death” for fast turns.
Denver opened a new A-East facility with 14 aircraft positions, purpose-built with Frontier, that fully opened a year ago. They were already operating out of Austin’s South Terminal, which doesn’t have jetbridges. Denver is cold in the winter, Austin hot in the summer. Neither is ideal for passenger comfort, but Frontier itself is not designed for passenger comfort.
- Using air stairs instead of jet bridges lets you do Dual-door boarding and deplaning – two sets of stairs, one each at the front and rear of the aircraft. That means faster boarding and deplaning, which means less time between flights. Planes only make money when they’re in the air.
- And air stairs are cheaper, since many airports charge extra for jet bridge use.
- You can also run more flights per gate. You need more aircraft positions, usually not more gates, to increase capacity.
- And jet bridges fail and block a departure, while stairs and ramps are modular.
- An ultra-low-cost airline operates in ways that make it more efficient, with passenger experience and behavior conforming to the airline’s convenience in exchange for low fares rather than the airline conforming to passenger comfort to attract business. So snow, wind, rain, and summer heat are all now part of the boarding experience for Frontier.
Boarding from an apron position (often involving a bus) and boarding via stairs is much more common in Europe and in Asia than the United States, although several airports have this for regional jet operations. Much of the time it’s fine, but in bad weather not as much.
And in places like Denver it is simultaneously a reason I prefer not to fly Frontier (along with their not offering wifi) given that they eschew jet bridges even where other airlines use them and it is a reason why they are successful: they know who they are and keep a tight lid on costs, a contrast to Spirit which inaugurated a new corporate campus last year a mere couple of months before entering their first bankruptcy.
Credit: viewfromthewing
