Frontier Airlines reported its fifth consecutive monthly operating profit April 28 and said it is in the “due diligence” phase with numerous potential investors who might provide financing for the carrier to exit bankruptcy later this year.
Sean Menke, president and CEO of the Denver-based low-cost carrier, said that Frontier is now in due diligence with “multiple parties at different levels.”
The vast majority of them are on the investment side,” Menke said, which means Frontier would continue as a stand-alone carrier. But Menke said some “potential strategic players” also are interested, which would entail a merger with another airline.
The airline’s regional subsidiary, Lynx, is only profitable on a stand-alone basis in peak months, but is a positive contributor on an annual basis because of the traffic it feeds to Frontier’s mainline services, Menke said. He also said Frontier’s experiment in putting a Lynx Bombardier Q400 turboprop in a mid-sized market, Oklahoma City, is working out well, and Frontier is looking into the possibility of putting the Q400s in other mid-sized cities to free up more mainline
