Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Frontier's Future




It's hard to accept the fact that Denver could lose its hometown air carrier. Now that Southwest airlines has entered the fray with a higher bid than Republic, it's looking more and more like this will be the case. Tom Clark, Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce's executive vice president, lays out the strengths Republic and Southwest bring to the Denver market in his "Cone of Silence" blog. The upside for consumers is, experts are predicting airfares out of Denver International Airport will stay low--DIA currently has the lowest prices in the nation.

And in the midst of all this jockeying among Denver's largest airline competitors, travelers are complaining less than they did a year ago, according to a DOT report released yesterday.

3 comments:

Susan said...

Just one quick comment - having the highest bid doesn't guarantee that a bidder will win...at least that's what employees have been told.

Maura O'Neal said...

Point well taken. F9 spokesman Steve Snyder was quoted in the Post today saying that Frontier was required to remain neutral through the bankruptcy proceedings. I hope that neutrality doesn't lead to money becoming the absolute bottom line. I'm only a spectator now, but it's nice to see how much hometown support Frontier has earned.

Susan said...

The way Sean Menke put it in a recent memo to the employees is: "When the auction begins, the different bidders with qualified proposals will be working to come up with the highest and best offer. It is important to remember at this point that the dollar amount of the proposals will not be the sole factor in determining the winning bid. We will look at a number of factors, including a group’s ability to actually close the deal as well as the impact to the different stakeholders, such as the unsecured creditors, bondholders and of course, you, our employees and the communities in which we live and operate."

Republic has already placed a binding bid and Southwest has until 8/10 to place their binding bid. If they do not, Republic will be the "winner."