Frontier Group - Q4 2025
February 11, 2026
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Frontier Group Holdings Q4 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there'll be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker for today, David Erdman, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
David Erdman (Senior Director of Investor Relations)
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our fourth quarter and year-end 2025 earnings call. With me this morning are Jimmy Dempsey, President, Chief Executive Officer; Bobby Schroeter, Chief Commercial Officer; and Mark Mitchell, Chief Financial Officer. On today's call, Jimmy will be providing commentary on his strategic priorities, and then we're gonna jump directly to the Q&A. However, a transcript of the prepared remarks, which would otherwise have been delivered by Bobby and Mark, is available for download on our investor relations website. Before yielding, let me recite the customary safe harbor provisions. We will be making forward-looking statements which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those predicted in these forward-looking statements.
Additional information concerning risk factors, which could cause such differences, are outlined in the announcement we released earlier, along with reports we filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Moreover, we will also be discussing non-GAAP financial measures, actual results of which are reconciled to the nearest comparable GAAP measure in the appendix of the earnings announcement. And then we'll also be referencing stage-adjusted unit metrics, which are based on 1,000 miles. So I'm gonna give the floor to Jimmy to begin his prepared remarks. Jimmy?
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
I'd like to start by emphasizing how honored I am to be taking on the role of CEO, particularly at such a pivotal moment for Frontier. When I accepted this role, the board gave me a clear mandate to enact change at our company. We know that we need to do better, better across the business and deliver increased value for all our stakeholders, employees, customers, and our investors. With this in mind, I have spent the past two months rolling up my sleeves to build a clear strategic path designed to return Frontier to sustained profitability as the low-cost, high-value airline of choice. This plan comprises four strategic priorities: rightsizing the fleet, strengthening our cost discipline, reducing cancellations and improving on-time performance, and driving customer loyalty.
Today, I will walk you through the actions we are taking on these priorities that I expect will drive meaningful changes and improvement across our organization. First and foremost, I am focused on resetting and stabilizing the business through a comprehensive rightsizing of our fleet. Returning Frontier to profitability is about going back to our roots as an organization. This means taking action to increase fleet productivity and efficiency. Just recently, we entered into a non-binding agreement with AerCap, which will enable us to benefit from the early termination of 24 aircraft leases in the second quarter. We plan to take advantage of this by increasing utilization across our remaining fleet to support our planned growth and drive efficiency. AerCap will remain one of our largest lessors, and we look forward to expanding our partnership with an additional 10 sale and leasebacks in the future as part of this agreement.
Separately, we reached a non-binding framework agreement with Airbus, which revises the delivery profile of our order book. It supports a more measured and sustainable long-term growth rate of approximately 10%, representing a meaningful moderation versus our prior growth trajectory. The update to our delivery profile and underlying growth, growth rate helps to minimize the proportion of new market activity while supporting ongoing productivity and operational reliability. Our plan to rightsize the fleet directly contributes to my next strategic priority, strengthening our cost discipline. Cost discipline has always been a cornerstone of our business model. We are targeting $200 million of annual run rate cost savings by 2027, largely from network optimization, productivity enhancements, and other efficiencies across the business, which includes approximately $90 million of expected annual rent savings from the early termination of the 24 aircraft leases.
The next strategic priority throughout 2026 is centered around improving our operational reliability by reducing cancellations and improving our on-time performance. We're simply not satisfied with our past record in these areas. The status quo is not acceptable, and every available option is on the table to improve our performance. I will give you some examples in a long list of initiatives we are working on across the business. Turn times. We are working on improvements to optimize our airport operation workflows, strengthening our head start performance, and improving day-of-travel communications with our customers. Over 85% of our customers use our recently updated mobile app. By leveraging digital channels, we can push timely alerts, offer clear next steps during delays, and ensure customers feel supported and informed throughout their journey.
We are also working on improved operational planning that better integrates scheduled maintenance into the early stage of our network design process to take advantage of our enhanced maintenance footprint. While we remain firmly committed to cost discipline and operational excellence, our final strategic priority is pairing that discipline with smart, high-return upgrades that will accelerate the maturity of our customer loyalty program. Last year, we launched a series of enhancements to our loyalty ecosystem, including changes that simplify elite benefits, enhance redemption opportunities, and create broader customer engagement. Our simplified award structure and easier elite status benchmarks have already begun to resonate with customers, and we are expanding on these efforts in 2026. Furthermore, we'll be modernizing every part of our commercial offering this year and into 2027, from digital tools and distribution to loyalty and onboard experience.
These initiatives include the fleet-wide rollout of first-class seating onboard Wi-Fi, an upgraded website and mobile app, and enhanced digital products and communications. These enhancements will broaden our appeal and effectively address friction points that have historically limited conversion and loyalty. We're building a product that remains incredibly affordable while delivering more value than ever before. Our loyalty assets represent one of our strongest long-term levers for value creation in the business. We're confident our recent and planned investments in our loyalty program and product offerings will be a significant part of our revenue growth. Overall, we're pairing our unique ability to provide low fares with an increasingly elevated product and customer experience to deliver unmatched value in air travel. The path ahead requires meaningful change, and we are embracing that reality with clarity and conviction in order to capitalize on the substantial opportunity we see in front of us.
We've adopted a disciplined, actionable set of strategic priorities to transform our company and put Frontier on a path towards sustained profitability. Above all, we are deeply committed to creating long-term value for our shareholders, employees, and customers. Thank you for your continued support. As David noted, we'll preempt commentary from Bobby and Mark to allow sufficient time for analyst questions. With that, operator, we're ready to begin the Q&A segment.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. We also ask that you please wait for your name and company to be announced before proceeding with your question. The first question that we have today is coming from Atul Maheswari of UBS. Your line is open.
Atul Maheswari (Equity Research Analyst)
Good morning. Thanks a lot for taking my question. I had a question on your long-term growth plan of 10%. So where is this growth going to be concentrated? Is it simply going to be backfilling the space vacated by Spirit, or are there other geographies where you see an opportunity? And then related to this topic, why is 10% the right, you know, growth target for this year and for the long term? Why is it not a smaller number than that, as that would, in theory, accelerate your ROI improvement? So any thoughts there would be helpful.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Atul. Look, we'll obviously be disciplined in deploying our capacity across over a multiyear basis across the system. What you're seeing this year is effectively infilling our network from a growth perspective. So we anticipate growth will be approximately 10%. I mean, there's a long way to go from now to the end of the year to determine exactly what that rate will perfectly be. We anticipate about half of that is filling out the existing network. And so moving capacity that was taken down on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Saturdays, and moving back into bringing capacity back into those days.
And then about half is new markets, and new markets are driven by items that didn't work last year or opportunities that are presenting themselves with changes in capacity across the environment. So you're seeing us take advantage of that in parts of the U.S., and you've seen us do that in a lot of airports around the States, like Atlanta, Las Vegas, and other places. In terms of the-
Atul Maheswari (Equity Research Analyst)
Okay.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
10%.
Atul Maheswari (Equity Research Analyst)
Yeah.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
In terms of the 10% growth rate and why that makes sense for us. Look, historically, we've grown the airline by mid to high single digit teens, and in some cases, well over 20%. We think that about when you grow by about 5%-7%, you don't necessarily take a significant RASM penalty to that growth. And we like the growth profile of around 10%. This drives a lot of utilization, flexibility in the organization, where you can manage your utilization and manage growth rates either below or above 10%, depending on market opportunities.
What we see at the moment, because we're infilling a lot of productivity into the airline, we think that that would provide real stability in the revenue performance across this year and sort of piggybacks on the benefits that we're seeing from a revenue perspective across the back end of the fourth quarter, and certainly the run rate that we're seeing right now in terms of RASM going through this quarter and into the second quarter.
Atul Maheswari (Equity Research Analyst)
Got it. That's, that's helpful. And then as my follow-up, I had a question on, the guidance that was, that was issued for this year. So based on my, on my math, it appears you will need a high single digit to maybe double digit RASM growth over the second to the fourth quarter to achieve the midpoint of the guidance. So A, can you confirm if that math is correct? And then B, if it is, then what's giving you the confidence that you can drive this level of RASM increase beginning the second quarter of this year? Because that's the time when your capacity growth will also accelerate to double-digit levels. Thank you.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Yeah, look, a couple of things are happening, right? You know, this is a major transition year for the airline. We will change the utilization profile of the business as you progress through into the second half of the year. And what we're seeing right now in terms of the RASM performance is meaningfully improved year-over-year. You know, we're seeing a trend above 10% in terms of RASM improvement. We're seeing that in the early booking process through March, and particularly April and May. And so we're actually quite encouraged by what we see in terms of RASM trends going across the year.
In terms of the long term, post adjusting our costs, like one of the focuses in the business is getting a significant saving in unit costs across this year, but largely moving into 2027. So you effectively have a reset year in terms of the business and its productivity, and that's where our focus lies at the moment. We're certainly seeing that stability in revenue and improvement in revenue carry forward, which gives us confidence that performance happens for the rest of the year.
Bobby Schroeter (Chief Commercial Officer)
Yeah, and this is Bobby. So some of the things that, you know, we're seeing, of course, there's a good supply-demand backdrop. That exists, capacity's been moderated a bit. But, some of the things we've done that we're seeing, unique benefits to as well, you know, last quarter, we moved back to a basic first product architecture, that has the three clearly defined, bundles that we have within there, so economy and premium and business. And then we reinforced revenue management discipline around that structure. So that allowed us to yield up more effectively across the fare ladder. And then in addition to that, which has enhanced this, we've seen significant in the past quarter, significant NDC distribution enhancement. So that's helping to improve the conversion across third-party channels.
It's allowing us to merchandise those bundles more effectively on the OTAs and aggregators, and they're effectively, if you think about it now, they're on the shelf, that they weren't before. So that's driving purchases early in the curve, allowing for improved attachment rates and better yield opportunities. And those are things that are gonna continue in the future. So as Jimmy said, we're seeing that in the first quarter, and those are continued benefits that we'll see throughout the year, we believe.
Atul Maheswari (Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you for that, and good luck with this year.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Thanks.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. One moment for the next question. And our next question is coming from the line of Savi Syth of Raymond James. Your line is open.
Savi Syth (Managing Director of Airlines and Advanced Air Mobility)
Hey, good morning. I wonder if you could remind us what the delivery cadence is for 2026, and then, you know, as you look to 2027 and 2028, just generally, how many aircraft are you kind anticipating with this revised order?
Mark Mitchell (Frontier Group Holdings)
Yeah, so the delivery cadence, you know, for this year, so we have 24 aircraft scheduled, six in the first quarter, eight in the second quarter, and then five in both the, the third and fourth quarter. And with the, you know, the fleet plan that we announced, when you look at those 24 inductions, 24, you know, early terminations, we expect to end the year, you know, with the same number of aircraft we began the year with, so 176. And then as you, you know, look across, you know, 2027, you know, we expect to be, you know, roughly by the end of 2027 at a similar level to, you know, where, where we ended 2025 and expect to end 2026.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Yeah, and Savi, I mean, that's an important point, right? You know, we're gonna start and end the year at the same number of aircraft, and actually start and end 2027 with the same number of aircraft that we started 2026 with. And so really, the growth that you're seeing in the business is bringing back that productivity in the airline that's been missing for the last couple of years. And so that puts us on a better trajectory in terms of core operating unit costs in the business. And so that gives us real confidence that this plan that we're putting in place today is very manageable across the airline. You're effectively infilling a utilization into a largely already existing network.
So that's where our confidence is coming from, from this plan, from a stability of revenue perspective, but also from an ability to operate the airline at a higher utilization clip.
Savi Syth (Managing Director of Airlines and Advanced Air Mobility)
That makes sense. I mean, I wonder if, like, what do you think you can get to in terms of utilization as you exit this year? And what's the, you know, in—with this fleet order, like, what's the new normal in utilization, and when can we get there?
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
We've targeted about 11.5 hours across the entire fleet. And the fleet is more complicated than it was prior to COVID, where you got closer to 12 hours, because of some of the engine noise with the, the new engine technology that exists, across the fleet. So you, you do have aircraft that are, that are less productive because of that. And so we've picked 11.5 hours. It gives us flexibility to add time to it if, if we see it in certain periods and take time away from a seasonal perspective, or, or other periods. So we think about 11.5 hours. That's our initial target to reset the business and do that between now and probably running into the summer of 2027.
You get a big boost from a utilization rate of like averaging about 9 hours last year when you remove the 24 aircraft and right-size the fleet. I mean, that's a very, very important change that'll happen quite abruptly. It is midway through the second quarter. So that's a really good step change as you progress into the second half of this year. And then you've got to grow into the remainder of the fleet from a pilot, flight attendants perspective to operate at close to 11.5 hours, probably by summer 2027.
Savi Syth (Managing Director of Airlines and Advanced Air Mobility)
That's helpful. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. One moment for the next question. The next question will be coming from the line of Jamie Baker of JPMorgan Securities. Your line is open.
Jamie Baker (Managing Director)
Hey, good morning, everybody. So the $200 million of run rate cost savings, I'm curious what labor assumptions underpin that. You know, I believe at one time, you know, Barry had at least sort of implied that revised economics were part of a longer-term plan that you had articulated. I, I know that there was never an official 2026 guide today, but, yeah, straightforward question: Is there a pilot deal in your full year guide?
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
There is not a pilot deal in our full year guide. We continue, Jamie, in negotiations with the pilots through the mediation process. And so look, we'll update on that if we have something to talk to you about. The $200 million of cost savings, about half of it is rent, right? Which comes from the deal we've done today. About another third of it is really network shape, driving unit cost savings into the business from where we fly, basically. And then you've got efficiencies that come on the back of having a business that was fragmented as the week progressed. So Tuesdays and Wednesdays had lower flying. Saturday had slightly lower flying than the other four days of the week. And so you get efficiencies from that.
But back to your primary question, no, we haven't baked in the cost savings any changes to crew other than efficiency that comes naturally across the week from flying a more stable schedule.
Jamie Baker (Managing Director)
Well, and that's a good-- and thanks for that, Jimmy, and that's a good segue into my second question, and I guess this kind of builds on, on what Savi was, was asking about. But, you know, clearly there are two iterations of low-cost flying in the U.S. The high, you know, daily utilization model, and the other being more of the, you know, kind of Allegiant Sun Country, you know, only fly when you can make money, low utilization model, whatever you want to call that. So, so it's clear you're leaning back into the high utilization model. What, what is it about Frontier's structure or, or network that assures us that that is the better of the two low-cost iteration operating models in the U.S.? Thanks in advance.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Well, fundamentally, the efficiency that comes to the airline from flying a more regular schedule throughout the week is a meaningful cost saving in the business.
Jamie Baker (Managing Director)
Mm-hmm.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
This business model, the focus is always on strengthening your cost discipline across the business. That's the appetite to do it. What we've seen in our business over the past number of months as we invest in loyalty, invest in the network, and adapt the network to today's environment and the playing field that we're in today, we've seen real performance improvement across the week, including some of the off-peak days that you have, albeit with lower capacity deployed on those days.
So we're pretty confident that the run rate RASM that we're seeing at the moment, given the structural change that has been happening in the industry, and the capacity discipline that is in a number of carriers across the industry, puts us in a really good place to take advantage of that and bring the airline back to that, you know, cost discipline place that it was prior to COVID.
Jamie Baker (Managing Director)
Okay, I appreciate it. Thank you. Jimmy.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. One moment for the next question. The next question will come from the line of Ravi Shanker of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Speaker 14
Hi, thank you. This is Katherine on for Ravi. Thanks for taking the question. I guess just a question on the guidance range. Obviously, there's a bit of a wide range here. So can you just maybe talk us through what would push you maybe to the low end of the guidance versus the high end and, and what you're assuming there for the full year? Thanks.
Mark Mitchell (Frontier Group Holdings)
Yeah. So as you look at the full year, right? I mean, as Jimmy highlighted, this is a transition year. You know, so, you know, this as we go through this year, working to reset the productivity, you know, and the efficiency of the airline, you know, we've got cost savings, you know, that we've got line of sight to, that we're targeting. And so, you know, as you look at that guidance range, it takes into account, you know, the fact that, you know, there is a transition, you know, there's a timing element, you know, to that that needs to be worked through. And, you know, as you look at, you know, the other side of the range, you know, we are seeing, you know, a more constructive supply-demand environment.
We do, you know, expect as we go through the year, you know, benefits from a productivity standpoint and a cost savings standpoint, and also further traction on the, you know, the revenue initiatives that were highlighted earlier.
Speaker 14
Got it. That's very helpful. And just as a quick follow-up, what was the catalyst for deferring some of these planes? I know you've talked about how 10% is going to be the right, growth for you. So was it more so, you know, figuring out what the growth rate long term would work for you guys, or kind of what kind of kicked this off? Thanks.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Yeah, I mean, we've been. Look, we're obviously managing over the last two months, two deals that we've been doing, to rightsize the fleet. The reason we picked 10% is we think it provides more stability from a revenue perspective than the airline has had historically, where it has had a growth rate of 20%+ in certain years, but certainly a high teens growth rate. And so we think 10% is a good number for the business to grow at. It provides an opportunity for us to drive growth into new markets where we're offering value that is clearly a differentiator with the rest of the industry, given our low-cost base. And so we think 10% makes sense.
Obviously, you can accelerate that if you, if you choose to or decelerate it, depending on how you utilize the airline. But we, we think around 8, 9, 10% is a good, is a good number for the airline to be at, over the, the kind of long term.
Speaker 14
Thank you.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
We expect, like, as the airline grows beyond 2030 and beyond, that may come down a little bit, because the airline is much bigger, and so the level of growth is not necessarily as high from a percentage term basis, but may well be consistent with the ASM production that you produce each year, you know, from a growth perspective.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. One moment for the next question. The next question will come from the line of Duane Pfennigwerth of Evercore. Your line is open.
Duane Pfennigwerth (Senior Managing Director of Equity Research)
Hey, thank you. Jimmy, I wonder if you could speak to return conditions generally on your engines. How much is an engine rebuild costing you in the current backdrop versus maybe what was contemplated in these leases 12 years ago? And if you're willing to speak to it, just remind us what your agreements sort of, you know, require at the back end. Is there a true-up mechanism in your return conditions?
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Yeah, I'm not going to get into the complexity of the deal that we've done in great detail. These are not 12-year-old aircraft. These are midway through their lease life. And so, the opportunity that came is related to, you know, a need for more engines in the CFM engine pool. And so, we have been in dialogue with multiple parties around this for the last month or so, to try and put a structure in place that worked for both us and them. And so we got to a very creative place. There is no liquidity penalty on Frontier in 2026 in relation to this deal.
We have to work through the redelivery conditions of the engines over the coming months, but we think that the cost of this is relatively minor in the context of our fleet. And actually, what it does, Duane, is it gives you a meaningful improvement in expected maintenance costs in the next 3-5 years from removing these aircraft from the fleet. And so this is a very positive deal, both in the short term to reset the productivity of the airline, but over the medium term, in terms of the maintenance profile of the business in the next three to five years. And so we're really happy with the deal that's been struck.
Duane Pfennigwerth (Senior Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay. How will you measure, you know, should we view this as this is a one and done, or this is one of perhaps, you know, several of these? How, how will you measure if 24 aircraft is sufficient to get you back to where you need to be?
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
I mean, look, there—I don't know that there's another opportunity that can mirror this opportunity that we've put in place, to remove 24 aircraft. There may well be an opportunity. It would just accelerate the productivity of the airline. You know, you would just move back to an 11.5-hour utilization rate at a faster pace. We've been very focused on this deal and separately fixing the medium- to long-term growth rate of the airline so that we can have a measured growth profile of the airline. If another deal comes along, we'll certainly look at it, but we'll be disciplined in terms of how we assess whether it's the right thing to do for the airline or not.
Duane Pfennigwerth (Senior Managing Director of Equity Research)
Okay, thank you.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Cheers, Duane.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. One moment for the next question. The next question will come from the line of Michael Linenberg of Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Michael Linenberg (Lead Analyst)
Yeah. Hey, good morning, everyone. Just maybe touching back on Duane's question, Jimmy. Obviously, the return of 24 airplanes, normally, you know, there's a sizable upfront cash component tied to redelivery costs. I think you said that there was no liquidity penalty, so presumably no cash goes out the door when they return. And I think you mentioned also that the P&L impact, it seemed like it would be modest. Is that reflected, like, when I look at the range for the year, the loss of $0.40 to the profit of $0.50, does that include any sort of P&L impact that would be associated with any sort of redelivery costs on the airplane?
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Yes. So there will be a one-time expense for... non-cash, one-time expense that occurs when we execute the final agreements. But there, and look, that one-time expense is likely to be non-GAAPed out.
Michael Linenberg (Lead Analyst)
Mm-hmm.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
The guidance range takes into account any real costs linked to this deal that we have from a return condition perspective.
Mark Mitchell (Frontier Group Holdings)
Yeah.
Michael Linenberg (Lead Analyst)
Okay, great.
Mark Mitchell (Frontier Group Holdings)
And so those one-time costs, you know, that we expect to be non-GAAPed out would not be part of, you know, that range.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Yeah.
Michael Linenberg (Lead Analyst)
Okay, great. And then just, my second question, you know, I saw that you did increase the size of the revolver, and as I recall, I believe you had collateral pledged against that revolver. You could correct me if I'm wrong, but if you could just give a sense, where does your sort of unencumbered collateral position stand? Thanks for taking my question.
Mark Mitchell (Frontier Group Holdings)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so the revolver is backed by, you know, our loyalty assets. And, you know, so as we have in the script, as we've talked about before, those cash flows continue, you know, to perform well. You know, we just had in Q4, our third consecutive quarter, you know, double digit growth. Q4 was up over 30%. So those are the assets, you know, that back the revolver. And yes, you're right. You know, in December, you know, one of the banks, you know, that supports the facility increased their position, you know, providing a vote of confidence, you know, for the revolver.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Yeah, and just, just to add to what Mark said, like one of the byproducts of deferring aircraft with Airbus is that you have less PDP payments that are required in the near term because you're effectively taking a pause on deliveries during 2027. And so, you end up actually with less, because we finance some of our PDP. You end up with less wrong debt in our PDP structure. So you actually end up in a lower net debt position.
Bobby Schroeter (Chief Commercial Officer)
Yeah, and to Jimmy's point, so you'll see in the guidance that we put forward an expectation of net PDP deposit returns. So a lower PDP balance at the end of the year of $170 million-$210 million. And with that deposit level going down, the corresponding debt levels, you know, would go down as well. Yes, to helping the leverage ratios.
Michael Linenberg (Lead Analyst)
Great. Thanks. Thanks for coming.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Thanks, Michael.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. One moment for the next question. Our next question is coming from the line of Scott Group of Wolfe Research. Your line is open.
Ryan Kaposi (Analyst)
Hey, good morning. This is Ryan Capozzi on for Scott. Maybe first, so we saw a pretty big divergence in fare revenue versus ancillary revenue trends this quarter. What were some of the drivers here, and how should we think about the growth of both, of both segments going forward?
Bobby Schroeter (Chief Commercial Officer)
Yeah, so, I kind of talked about this a little bit earlier. One of the things that we've done in the past quarter was migrate back to a basic first product. And what that means is people go in, they're deciding whether they want to take the basic product and purchase ancillary, you know, purchase whatever ancillary products they want from that, or they can choose a bundle of which we have three bundles there, and can choose that. So that has had a good upward movement around ancillary itself, in addition to NDC, the New Distribution Capability, which is, you have, you know, it's effectively a direct connect.
We've been scaling that up more broadly in the past quarter, and not only does that help conversion overall, but the products, the bundle products are actually on the shelf, which they hadn't been previously. So that, again, helps move things back in the curve, helps yield up and helps bundle attachment as well. So there's a variety of things that are unique to us, again, that have helped from that perspective. On the fare side, additionally, you know, as we move back to basic first, a lot of that, we're disciplined in how we handle that from a revenue management perspective. And that has helped, you know, along with, of course, the environment, the macro environment, has helped solidify an outsized benefit on that side as well.
So you're seeing fare improvements, you're seeing ancillary improvements, and again, we anticipate based on some of those things being very structural to see that benefit move forward as well.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Yeah, and Ryan, just to add to what Bobby has said, like one of the benefits we're getting from having we went through this about two years ago with the New Frontier on our website, and we played around with different structures during last year. We got to a much more disciplined place from October on in terms of the way we price, as he mentioned. But don't underestimate the impact that moving to NDC and giving clarity to someone who's booking through an online travel agent exactly the total cost of their trip with Frontier.
What you're seeing today is an ability for a customer to look at the value that they can get from Frontier by adding a bundle, economy bundle or other bundles to their booking, and so they know the all-in price. Historically, a customer would book through a GDS provider or through an OTA linked to a GDS, and they wouldn't have that clarity. They'd just see the fare, and then they'd typically come to our site at Manage My Booking or at check-in, and add either on an à la carte basis or through a bundle the incremental products that they want to buy.
What we're seeing is an earlier conversion of bundles in the booking curve at the point of booking of the customer, but also clarity for the customer, where they actually see the real value that's created by booking with us in comparison to the competition. And so that is having a unique benefit into Frontier. Other airlines have obviously had NDC for quite some time. We were late to the game, but since we launched it, we've seen a really good attachment rates and conversion rates across that distribution channel, where it's adding to the improvement in the unit revenues that we're seeing in the business.
Ryan Kaposi (Analyst)
Got it. That's helpful there. And then could you maybe just talk specifically about your strategy in Atlanta this year, and maybe why you're growing so aggressively there this year?
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Yeah, I mean, you've seen Southwest and Spirit reduce capacity in Atlanta. And we have for a long time had an operation in Atlanta, and we've seen an opportunity to enhance that in terms of the volume of traffic flows that we are flying from Atlanta, and we're really happy with the performance of the base. We had about 60 daily departures in Atlanta through the peak last summer. And obviously, we're encouraged by the commercial performance that we're adding more departures this year to Atlanta. So we're very happy with the performance.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. One moment for the next question. Our next question is coming from the line of Andrew Didora of Bank of America. Your line is open.
Andrew Didora (Analyst)
Hi, good morning, everyone. Actually, just another question on your growth this year. So you talked about 50/50, kind of 50% new markets you just touched on Atlanta. I guess it's the 50% that you kind of dubbed the infilling, you know, adding in Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday flying, but RASM is improving now. I know these off-peak days have been highlighted as sort of the weakest RASM days. So what, you know, why are you adding these back?
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Largely because, Andrew, we see a real improvement in the revenue environment from more disciplined capacity deployment across the industry. You've seen significant reduction in capacity that's come from Spirit Airlines, particularly in the West of the United States. And so if you looked historically, like two years ago, the overlap between Frontier and Spirit was close to 50%. It's now meaningfully lower than that, and meaningfully lower than that in the West of the United States. And so we see opportunities that are coming on the back of their changes in capacity that we think allows us to move more flights to off-peak days of the week and do it successfully and contribute to the overall airline.
And so, that's really one of the reasons behind it. We're also seeing some discipline across other airlines in terms of their capacity deployment. And then we're really encouraged by the performance in terms of our revenue generation with the changes that we made that we discussed earlier around a disciplined pricing strategy, together with actually the new distribution capability that we have across all our OTAs and LTAs now. So we feel pretty confident that the revenue environment is moving in a very good place. And I mean, fundamentally, this business model is built on higher utilization and really strong cost discipline.
And that higher utilization gets you to a really good unit cost place that we think gets the airline back on a path to sustain profitability.
Andrew Didora (Analyst)
Got it, understood. Then, I guess I'll ask the question, you know, given you're backfilling a lot of Spirit's markets, you know, does that mean you're no longer would have interest, you know, kind of going forward in terms of combining with Spirit in the future? Thanks for taking the questions.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Yeah, sure. Look, I'm not going to speculate on what happens next with Spirit. Look, both the board and I are solely focused on putting Frontier on a path back to sustainable profitability. And that's really been the focus of my attention for the last two months.
Andrew Didora (Analyst)
Got it. Thank you.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Thanks.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. One moment for the next question. Our next question will come from the line of Daniel McKenzie of Seaport Global. Your line is open.
Daniel McKenzie (Equity Research Analyst)
Oh, hey, thanks. Good morning, guys. Jimmy, I guess first, congrats on your new role.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Thank you.
Daniel McKenzie (Equity Research Analyst)
You know, I guess my first question really is just putting on the hat of a longer-term investor, you know, getting that capital into your stock, is the board holding you to any specific profit metrics? So either, you know, return on invested capital, operating margin, or however, I guess you're measuring the success of the business.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Look, for the last two months, Dan, as you can see from what we've announced today, we are very focused on bringing the airline back to sustained profitability. You know, I, I've been given a clear mandate, to change the business and bring that back. And like, I've been very focused on right-sizing - initially, right-sizing the fleet and getting a cost plan that makes sense for the airline over the medium term. You know, our job now is really to fix some of the other things in the business, such as, like, reducing cancellations and improving our on-time performance. That is a considerable effort that we have a series of projects around to build customer loyalty into the business and a good customer experience that drives repeat traffic flows.
Really, the outcome of that will be determined by how we perform on loyalty, right? And also the metrics that we have every day in terms of our operational performance. That's where the focus of the business is at the moment. Clearly, from a long-term incentive perspective, and there are multiple different metrics that exist in all of our teams in long-term incentives around shareholder performance and then the performance of Frontier within that world. And so we are very aligned with our shareholders, with a real focus on returning the airline to sustained profitability.
Daniel McKenzie (Equity Research Analyst)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, very good. My next question really is, I guess, for, you know, Bobby. A couple of points here. Just going back to that point of loyalty, what was the redeemed revenue per passenger in 2025, and how would you see Frontier exiting 2026 on that metric? And then, you know, just related to this is, you know, sort of the K-shaped economic recovery that we have seen here. I'm just curious, what % of your passengers and/or revenue, you know, has been permanently lost from this uneven economic recovery, you know, sort of among the low to middle-income workers? And is that part of the missing revenue story today that potentially could come back at some point, or how are you thinking about that?
Bobby Schroeter (Chief Commercial Officer)
Yeah, I mean, rather than talk about sort of the specific revenue around loyalty, I'll just talk about it in components of what we drive through loyalty. So we have the co-brand card. Of course, that is a cornerstone of the loyalty program, in terms of how we profit from that, but also provide value to our customers overall. That has seen a tremendous amount of engagement. The overall loyalty revenue is up over 30%, as we stated, and a lot of that, a large part of that is the co-brand card setup. And again, that's because of the changes that we've made throughout the organization, not just in terms of what we provide from a product perspective, but also what we're providing in the loyalty program itself.
And so you've seen engagement, not just in terms of new customers and acquisitions within that, but the spend has gone up tremendously as well within that, showcasing that people want to engage with us as an airline more than they had in the past. We also have two other subscription programs, of course, Discount Den and GoWild, which have been very, very beneficial to us. GoWild has seen a tremendous amount of upside in the revenue year-over-year as well, in large part because of the product that we provide. It's, you know, you're able to fly for free for a year, in some cases more than a year, based on when we rolled this out.
And people have been seeing that value and transacting, and we've been acquiring more GoWild customers than we had historically within that. On the K-shaped scenario, you know, the way I'd say that is, look, we have a cost structure that provides opportunity for really multiple segments and create flexibility within that. We have people who want to have the lowest price possible. We have that. We also have been putting in a variety of options and premium products that people can engage with. UpFront Plus is one of those. Historically, we talked about the paid load factor there. That's up over 80% now, so. We have first class coming in a variety of other things.
So we actually have the ability to profit in a wide range of setups and how people want to engage, that other airlines don't have the ability to do as much. So we're focused on making sure that we have the cost structure set, where we can continue to engage on that and provide the lowest fare, but also providing premium products that people can engage with and if they so choose, be able to do that as well. So we have that spectrum. And so we haven't seen that. In fact, we've actually seen people engaging at a higher rate with us, as we talked about some of the unique things that we have going for us. Those actually will help in the future as well.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
But just in terms of the K-shaped economy comment, like, we are seeing an improvement, a meaningful improvement in unit revenues. Like, our unit revenues are going to be 10% plus up in the quarter. We'll see how March finally books in the coming weeks, but the trends are very favorable to the business. You know, Bobby mentioned that we've obviously added some premium products into the business, but one of the benefits that we're getting is people booking earlier with clarity and booking their non-ticket items earlier in the process.
Our booking curve is actually extending out further than it previously was, which is a really good sign for our business and the product that we're selling and merchandising to our customers.
Daniel McKenzie (Equity Research Analyst)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, very good. Thanks so much for the time, you guys.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Thanks.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. One moment for the next question. Our next question will be coming from the line of Chris Christopher N. Stathoulopoulos of Susquehanna International Group. Thank you.
Chris Stathoulopoulos (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Thank you. Good morning. So I want to go back to apologies upfront for another capacity question here, but I'm trying to reconcile. So the sustained pro-profitability, this, you know, as part of your four, I guess, four-pronged plan here, 8% to 9% to 10% you said longer term here. Maybe if you could help understand-- part of that I heard in, you know, insofar as the market's 50% in new markets. In the past, it's been about competing in some of these larger markets, which are also typically more expensive to compete in, and not sure how that also squares with the sustained profitability.
But I guess maybe a more granular approach to how you're thinking about holistically, whether it's the 10%, the 8%-10%, you can frame that departure, stage, guage. Those tend to obviously have different margin profiles, you know, how you're thinking about macro scenarios under that, and also all the things that we're seeing from competitors here with their re-banking and connectivity efforts. It's just not entirely clear how that level of growth at this point is sort of, I guess, you know, really squares with the plan that you've outlined, and perhaps the best path forward, if you will, into this transition year or into longer term. Thank you.
Yeah, I mean, most of the growth that's coming, I mentioned this earlier in the call, is coming from in filling the network that already exists, right? And so it's not a charge for 10% growth over the next two years, where you're adding substantially new markets into the airline. You know, so you already have a clearly with a 10% improvement in RASM in this quarter, revenue stability in that network. And so we're really encouraged by the performance that we're seeing in the business in that network. We're obviously then looking at the opportunities that exist across the entire U.S., where capacity is changing across airports. And so we'll take advantage of capacity opportunities that exist at our cost base.
Our cost base is very, very important to how we deploy assets and how we move the airline back to a path to profitability. Getting more productivity and efficiency into the airline is foundational to that cost base, and giving us the ability to offer real value to customers, and that they now see it very clearly, that real value, and they're able to attach to it and convert. That's where our business is. That's why we have confidence in growing the airline by 10% a year. We think it's very, very good for the unit cost in the business. Look, we have a value proposition to the customer that really is unmatched across the United States in a lot of the major markets that exist out there.
We consistently provide the lowest fares and the lowest all-in pricing for customers. We should be very proud of that as an airline. Why wouldn't we grow?
Okay. Yeah, my second question, I just want to follow up on the point Jamie made earlier. So it sounds like you're betting on or you're anchoring to this high utilization model, if you will.
I know you described this as a transition year, but as we think about Frontier exiting this year or end of decade, and you're able to achieve these initiatives here, in this environment, brand loyal, premium tech focus, however you want to describe it, could you help frame, and I'm not asking for guidance here, but a high level, assuming this all plays out and this environment is the new norm, if you will, how we should think about margins, free cash flow, return on cap- anything at a high level that we should think about, assuming this all falls in place here and this high utilization model, as you said, you're anchoring yourself to, is successful? Thank you.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Sure. Look, we're very focused on moving the airline back to a free cash flow generation business model. And that is a core tenet of the modeling that's been put in place and the drive to rightsize the fleet this year. We use this year as a transition. I'm not going to start guiding three, four years out, but our expectation is that the airline gets back to sustained profitability and free cash flow generation over the next number of years, which puts the airline in a very, very strong position.
Chris Stathoulopoulos (Senior Equity Research Analyst)
Okay. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We next have a follow-up from the line of Savi Syth of Raymond James. Your line is open.
Savi Syth (Managing Director of Airlines and Advanced Air Mobility)
Hey, thank you for taking the follow-up. I just was curious, as you kind of go through these changes and, you know, some of your kind of sister organizations have kind of thought about financing aircraft differently, and curious what your views are on kind of continuing to use, say, a leaseback versus, you know, some other avenues for financing.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Yeah, I mean, we're largely financed, Savi, this year, through sale and leasebacks. I mean, over the medium term, I think the airline will probably diversify somewhat from sale and leaseback financing. But I mean, in the immediate near term, we've largely financed most of the fleet that's coming this year. And so I don't see any near-term change, but I can obviously, over time, see a navigating to kind of a more balanced financing structures across the airline, where you continue to have a high proportion of your fleet financed with sale and leasebacks or financing, but you bring some other forms of financing into the business. That makes sense. If it commercially makes sense, we should do it.
Savi Syth (Managing Director of Airlines and Advanced Air Mobility)
Makes sense. All right. Thank you.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Thanks, Savi.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We will now turn the call back to Jimmy Dempsey for brief remarks. Please go ahead.
Jimmy Dempsey (President and CEO)
Thank you. I just wanted to quickly say a thank you to all the analysts that are on the call. We're happy to take follow-up calls if you have any further questions today or in the coming days. Look, we look forward to seeing you in person over the next couple of months. Appreciate your time and thank you very much. We have a lot of work to do here. We're going to roll up our sleeves now and move the airline back to a sustainable profitability path. I think that's fundamentally important for the airline, and I think today's plan that we've laid out to you puts us in a really good place and path to bring the airline back to that location.
Thank you very much, and enjoy your day.
Operator (participant)
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you so much for joining. You may now disconnect.
