How to book the cheapest flights from Philly, according to Frontier Airlines’ CEO

Philadelphia airport officials expect more than 4 million travelers to depart from PHL this summer. Many of them will likely be traveling on Frontier Airlines, the Denver-based, low-cost carrier that flies direct from PHL to 27 cities.

The airline started flying out of Philly in 2004 and has grown to PHL’s second-largest carrier with about 225 flights planned to take off weekly this summer.

The Inquirer chatted with Frontier CEO Barry Biffle, a veteran of the aviation industry, about what Philly travelers can expect this summer, how Frontier is dealing with industrywide worker upheaval, why it charges more for carry-on bags, and how he became an Eagles fan.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

They’re gonna see the most destinations we’ve ever served. We’re up to 27 nonstop routes, and we got to call it 30 flights a day or so. So we got a lot of flying, but I think the big change you’ll see from Frontier is the GoWild! Pass [which, for a limited time, allows customers to book an entire summer’s worth of travel in advance].

The cheapest flights are going to be midweek. The lowest prices are on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, followed by Saturdays, depending on the season. Your most expensive days to travel are Thursday, Friday, Sunday, and Monday.

As you get closer, it gets more expensive. As people are thinking about traveling this summer: the sooner you buy, the more you’re gonna save. This phenomena of buying concert tickets and sporting tickets right at the time of the event has changed the way people buy, but it’s not how airline tickets work.

These things do happen. And you know, there’s not much we can do. If there is a strike with one of these airlines, there’s gonna be a lot of passengers that are stranded. We will accommodate all of them that we can. But if you’re on these carriers and a strike happens, there’s very little can be done at that point.

We’ve been a lot more ahead of the shortage of staffing, whether it be pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, gate agents, you name it. And so we’ve tended to be honestly a little more overstaffed recently. In fact, we have over 100 too many pilots right now. We need to actively manage that down. Same thing with flight attendants.

I used to run consumer marketing for US Airways so I spent a lot of time in Philadelphia 20 years ago. I spent a lot of time at Eagles games. “Fly, Eagles, Fly” and all that. I was very interested in what I thought we could do there. And when I came [to Frontier], the only flying we were doing out of PHL was charter flying, and I think we had Cancun flights. My first question was why we don’t have scheduled service from Philadelphia? I’d only been here about two months, but that winter, we started scheduled service to Orlando and then later to Denver. We’ve been investing in it ever since. We love Philly. And it’s a top city for us.

I am somewhat of an Eagles fan. I have to be careful living in Colorado. We’re Broncos here. But in the ‘04-’05 season, I went to see like a dozen games, including away games and including the Super Bowl. I became quite a fan. That was back in the [Terrell Owens] days with Donovan McNabb. It was a fun time.

I don’t believe that our actual internal complaints are that much different than any other airline. Unfortunately, we had several news articles, and every time people write about them, the DOT gets more complaints. So it’s not a fair representation. It was like 40 out of 100,000 people. This is a very small amount, and it’s not statistically fair when you look at what drives complaints. If you invite complaints, you’re gonna get complaints. That’s number one.

Number two: Customers and people who travel a lot, they never complain. They understand that weather happens, right? Infrequent travelers complain at a higher rate than frequent travelers, just because they don’t understand.

You also have people who are much more technically savvy. We sell 99.9% of our tickets online, so it’s pretty easy for them to go find where to complain.

I’m not surprised by the rate. I’m disappointed in it.

If we have too many carry-on bags, it slows the turn time of the airplane. So we’ve tested lots of times, having the check bag because it’s easier for us to make sure the plane operates on time.

If we go back two years, it all started when they got rid of the mask rule in May of 2021 when we were starting to get [the COVID-19] vaccine. But the mask rule was kept for airlines. That’s when it all went south. All these incidents, this crazy stuff started happening. People were like, ‘Oh, you’re not gonna make me wear a mask’ and all this silliness. It just agitated people. It didn’t help that we were a year into COVID, and there were just a lot of people in a bad mood.

That continued effectively until last spring.

We kept having all these meetings with the FAA, saying we’ve got to protect everybody. These people are violent. [They finally did away with the mask mandate] and like clockwork, within days, those incidents fell off like rock. We’ve continued to have a few. And I would say you’re still elevated vs. 2019. But nothing like it was.

Those cookies would cost in the millions per year. There’s also a weight issue because you have to have an oven. I remember how popular it was, but it would be very expensive. I’d love to be able to provide that, but we’re in the business of providing people an option to travel that’s inexpensive and uneventful. There are folks in Philadelphia that if it weren’t for us, they wouldn’t be able to fly. I’ve got to be careful about going too high-touch. And the truth is, you’ve got a great airline there with American Airlines that gives the high-touch. If you want a great deal, you come to us.