Frontier Airlines formally ended any immediate hopes for service from New Castle Airport.
“Frontier has pulled out of ILG because it wasn’t a profitable operation. If market conditions change, we may look at it again in the future,” spokesman Jim Faulkner stated in an email message.
The airline had ceased service from the airport to Orlando and Tampa in Florida in April, as the winter travel season ended.
In the past year or so, the airline had shifted its focus to ultra-low fare service from larger airports. Under new owner Indigo Partners.
Frontier recently announced it would buy larger Airbus jets that would give the carrier the lowest operating costs in the industry.
Earlier this year, it added daily flights from Philadelphia International Airport to some of the destinations that had been flown from New Castle. Flights from New Castle, were made only a few times a week to cities like Chicago and Atlanta and points in Florida.
Frontier has maintained much of its service from Trenton-Mercer County in seeking Delaware Valley passengers. The airport serves a large area where travel times to Philadelphia and New York are an hour or more.
The Philadelphia area remains one of the six largest markets in the U.S. Service is dominated by US Airways, which is merging into American Airlines.
However, discount carriers like Jet Blue, Spirit, Southwest and Frontier have added service that have held down fares to some locations.
Service from New Castle was hampered by an old terminal and the ability to handle only one jet at a time. Also, Philadelphia remains a convenient airport for many passengers with travel times of less than an hour from many locations in northern Delaware.
The service from New Castle, over a year-long period did attract a large number of passengers in the Delaware Valley who were drawn by the free parking and convenience of the location along Route 13.
Delaware has seen sporadic attempts at airline service with carriers using pulling out of the market after a year or less.
