The chief executive of ultra-low-cost carrier Frontier Airlines has implored passengers with important events coming up to buy backup tickets at their own expense because of the very real threat of impending mass flight cancellations.
Barry Biffle took to LinkedIn on Thursday to comment on the request by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy for airlines to scale back their flights beginning tomorrow in an attempt to relieve mounting pressure on the US national airspace system.
The FAA has ordered a 10% reduction in flight movements in and out of 40 key airports across the United States due to staffing shortages at air traffic control towers and centers as a federal government shutdown drags on for a record-breaking amount of time.
Like other US airlines, Frontier says it will comply with the request to reduce its flight schedules, although the Denver-based carrier remains optimistic that most of its flights will still operate as planned.
Nonetheless, Biffle suggested in his LinkedIn post that passengers should brace themselves for travel chaos, and proactively having a backup plan might be the only way for customers to reach important events in time.
“If you are headed to a wedding, funeral or something you must be somewhere for in the next few days – given the risk of flights cancelling I would suggest passengers buy a backup ticket on another carrier that departs after the first ticket,” Biffle wrote.
“That way if your flight cancels you have an immediate backup,” he explained. “Carriers like Frontier will be putting you on the next available flight but that may not be until after your event due to the scale of this disruption.”
“Apologies for the disruption. This will be necessary until the government shutdown is ended to ensure safety for all travelers, given reduced staffing levels with ATC.”
Biffle suggested that travelers with the spare cash to be able to do so, spent even more on flexible backup tickets that could be refunded or, at the very least, changed to a credit note for a future flight.
Ultimately, though, it’s too early to tell whether the flight capacity cuts will cause as much disruption as some people fear.
On Friday, capacity cuts will start at 4% before slowly being increased to 10% which should give airlines and the FAA some time to adjust schedules without leaving passengers high and dry.
Carriers such as United Airlines intend to keep operating flights as normal between its major hubs and will prioritize scaling back shorter regional flights and services to ‘spoke’ airports.
With the current seasonal low in travel demand, airlines are also hoping to avoid too much disruption by combining flights to destinations with multiple flights per day.
Frontier might also be well-positioned to swerve most of the disruption because of its controversial transition to a predominantly ‘turn only’ carrier.
This means that rather than planes and crew working through the airline’s route network, going from one destination to the next, they end the day at the same airport as they started – a so-called ‘turn’ because the plane flies to its destination and turns straight back around.
