Water cannons salute Frontier on its first day at Paine Field

EVERETT — Two water cannons greeted the first arrival from Frontier Airlines at Paine Field on Monday.

It was part of the celebration welcoming Frontier to Paine Field for the first time. It included a ribbon cutting from Brent Smith, CEO of Propeller Airports, a visit from Skyanna, a North American porcupine from Woodland Park Zoo, and plenty of green and yellow balloons.

The only thing missing was more passengers on the Frontier flights themselves.

Only 45 of the 186 seats on Frontier’s first inbound Airbus 320 flight from Phoenix to Paine Field and 50 on the departure back to Phoenix were occupied, said Frontier spokesperson Jennifer DeLaCruz.

Frontier and airport officials said they were optimistic that their planes will fill up once word spreads that there is a new airline at the Everett Airport. Since United Airlines ended its Denver service in October 2021, Alaska Airlines has been the only carrier at Paine Field.

That won’t be the case after today.

It was on March 3 when Frontier announced it would start service in June — initially offering discount fares of $39 one way to Denver and $29 to Las Vegas and Phoenix.

Frontier will fly once a day on Monday, Wednesday and Friday from Paine to three destinations: Phoenix, Las Vegas and Denver.

Charles Barnal paid $150 for a seat on the inaugural Frontier flight from Paine to Phoenix, but he was happy with the price.

The construction worker just bought his ticket early Monday morning.

“It was half the price of any other airline,” he said.

Frontier is known as an ultra-low-cost carrier. It sets prices usually under what other carriers would charge but adds extra fees for reserving a seat in advance, putting luggage in an overhead bin and buying snacks or a soda aboard a plane.

It also can move quickly and end service when it doesn’t sell enough tickets. In December, Frontier began service to and from Vail Colorado to San Francisco, and Denver to Dallas/Fort Worth, but by April had announced it was stopping the service.

Alaska Airlines already offers daily flights to Phoenix and Las Vegas, but Paine Field has not had service to Denver since United Airlines pulled out in October 2021.

Smith said the restart of Denver service was very positive news. He said that Denver serves a passenger hub for Frontier.

“Denver was always a very good destination at this airport when United served it, and we’re especially excited that people will now have options to connect there to get to the rest of the country,” he said.

Despite the initial low numbers, DeLaCruz remained optimistic.

“There were pretty light loads for our inaugural flights today, but we expect that once there’s more awareness that Frontier is operating from Paine Field, things are going to build quickly,” DeLaCruz said.

On Monday, only one of Frontier’s nine arrivals and departures, an incoming flight from Denver with 128 seats occupied, had sold a majority of seats.

All of the Frontier flights in and out of Paine Field are Airbus 320s with a capacity of 186 seats. Frontier also flies Airbus 321 planes with 220 seats.

The number of passengers using the airport is still only around half of the more than 1 million passengers pre-COVID-19, even as other airports across the nation, including Seattle Tacoma International, have surpassed their pre-pandemic numbers.

DeLaCruz said no deadline has been set for Paine Field to prove itself as a viable destination for the airline.

“There are so many variables that come into play,” she said. “But lets just assume its going to be a great success and we are going to be talking about additional routes from Paine Field.”

Smith said he wouldn’t read too much into the low number of passengers for Frontier’s start day because it was not a huge travel day.

“It’s on a Monday, its right before schools get out and so forth,” he said. “First day of service, it’s going to take a while to build up.”

Randy Diamond: 425-339-3097; randy.diamond@heraldnet.com.