Frontier to Restart Service in Delaware

Frontier Airlines, which pulled out of Delaware nearly five years ago and left it as the only state in the union without commercial airline service, is coming back.

The official announcement will come on Tuesday, Jan. 28, according to the Delaware Business Times, which first reported that the media event was on Gov. John Carney’s published schedule for the week.

The flights will commence in the spring out of New Castle Airport.

State and airport officials had been trying to restore airline service since Frontier pulled out in June of 2015, just two years after it began flights to Chicago-Midway, Denver, Houston, Orlando, Tampa and Fort Myers, Florida.

New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer created a 12-person task force chaired by Alan Levin to study the future of the airport in the hopes of finding a solution before the contract between the county and the airport expired in June of this year.

“The biggest question is what is Frontier going to do differently this time than five years ago,” Levin told the Delaware Business Times. “A lot of people were left stranded when they suddenly pulled out. There were a lot of upset people and we had to field a lot of the calls.”

Delaware residents were forced to go to out-of-state airports in Baltimore, Philadelphia and Atlantic City to catch flights.

It is not known where Frontier flights will be flying to this time around.

Levin said his task force is not done.

“Our work is going to continue,” Levin said. “Our role is not to look at Frontier and say it’s a game-changer. It’s another string on the bow and I hope that the scenario this time will be different.”