Frontier Airlines Adding New International Routes from Atlanta

Clearly, Frontier Airlines is distancing itself from whatever feelings might have been hurt when it was rejected earlier this summer in its attempt to merge with Spirit Airlines.

In a sign that it is moving forward, Frontier has announced it will add five more international destinations to its flight schedule out of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the nation’s busiest airport.

Beginning in November and December, Frontier flights will leave ATL bound for San Jose, Costa Rica; Liberia, Costa Rica; Nassau, Bahamas; San Salvador, El Salvador; and Kingston, Jamaica.

Frontier made a splash less than a year ago when it held a similar press conference at Hartsfield-Jackson to announce it would be flying to Cancun, Mexico; Montego Bay, Jamaica; and Punta Cana, Dominican Republic from Atlanta, the airline’s first international routes.

If Frontier’s plan is to expand, it will now do so gradually and organically with announcements like today, instead of through a more immediate acquisition. Frontier and Spirit announced in February a plan to merge the two low-budget airlines but by April a new suitor had jumped in – JetBlue Airways.

JetBlue put on a full court press for Spirit, threatening a hostile takeover at one point before simply just raising its bid financially until it was $1 billion more than Frontier’s final offer.

Spirit stockholders rejected Frontier’s bid on July 27 and less than a day later, Spirit announced a deal with JetBlue.