Frontier Airline’s new livery seen out in the open in Denver ’“ Photo: Billy Ellion | @PHXSpotters1
Here it is — in the flesh. This is the new Frontier Airline’s livery seen outside of a hangar at Phoenix Goodyear Airport (GYR). It looks almost exactly as the leaked image of the livery — which is not too bad.
On Tuesday, Frontier Airlines will have an official unveiling of the new livery and we are excited to see it in person.
Are these the new liveries of Frontier and Southwest?
Today might go down as “Airline Livery Leak Day.” It appears that the new liveries of both Frontier and Southwest Airlines have leaked on the internet today, which shows that it is hard to hide things from social media.
Southwest Airlines has a media event set up at their headquarters for this Monday and Tuesday, where they have been promoting a big announcement. Similarly, Frontier Airlines has scheduled a media event for Tuesday morning, giving big hints of a livery update. But it appears that the big surprise for both might have been ruined.
The Frontier Airlines’ image shows an evolution of their livery with a retro “F,” but keeping the familiar animals on the tail. Whereas the Southwest livery maintains the same colors, but is more revolutionary in its design.
New Frontier Airbus A320 (N220FR) with sharklets – Photo: Frontier Airlines
Republic Airways Holdings has finally offloaded Frontier Airlines to a new owner, and right at the deadline. Earlier this week, Indigo Partners agreed to purchase Frontier and continue the push towards making them an ultra-low-cost carrier (ULCC). Indigo and its head, William Franke, know a thing or two about ULCCs; up until recently they were responsible for Spirit Airlines’ growth to become a leader in the segment.
Frontier’s acquisition by a new owner obviously raises questions about their future, particularly as it relates to their home base of Denver International Airport. Since 2006, when Southwest Airlines started ramping up its presence, Denver has been a three-carrier hub (with United Airlines being the third). Many have doubted the stability and longevity of such an arrangement; as a Denver-based flyer, I can attest to the fact that the three carriers have managed to keep airfares extremely low.
An Air France Airbus A318. The airline is the world’s largest operator of the A318. Photo: Thomas Becker
The last Airbus A318 operated by a North American airline has exited service. The A318, sometimes affectionately referred to as the “Babybus,” is the smallest member of the Airbus A320 family. Weighing nearly the same as its larger brother, the A319, and operating with the same crew requirements, the economics of operating the A318 in North America just didn’t make sense. The similarly-sized Boeing 737-600 has largely suffered the same fate (although WestJet still operates a fleet in Canada).
Frontier Airlines new livery. Image from Frontier.
Do not worry, the cute animals are not going away! But Frontier has updated their livery to promote their website versus just the silver “Frontier” titles seen previously on the aircraft. The first animal to see the new livery is Mickey the Moose, who was previously on a Q400 and Boeing 737 before being brought out of retirement to be on this Airbus A319.
“Changing our livery provided us an opportunity to promote FlyFrontier.com,” Frontier spokesperson explained to AirlineReporter.com. “We won’t change the rest of our fleet all at once, but when we add aircraft to our fleet or older aircraft need to be painted, we’ll add the FlyFrontier.com to those aircraft as well.”