Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Frontier Group Holdings Q2 2022 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are on 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 need to press star one one. I would now like to turn the call over to your host, David Erdman. You may begin.
Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our Q2 2022 earnings call. Today's speakers will be Barry Biffle, President and CEO, Jimmy Dempsey, EVP and CFO, and Daniel Shurz, Senior Vice President, Commercial. Each will deliver brief prepared remarks, and then we'll get to your questions. First, let me quickly cover the customary safe harbor provisions. During this call, 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 published earlier, along with reports we file with the SEC. We may also discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which are reconciled to the nearest comparable GAAP measure in the appendix of the earnings announcement.
Lastly, we will be participating in several investor conferences in August and September. We certainly hope to see you at one of those events. I'll give the floor to Barry to begin his comments. Barry.
Thanks, David, and good afternoon, everyone. Needless to say, it's been an interesting few months since our last earnings call. While public attention was largely centered on the merger, behind the scenes, we realized the highest quarterly revenue in history at $909 million, 43% above the comparable 2019 quarter and a record ancillary revenue of $75 per passenger. The strong revenue performance in the second quarter enabled us to overcome elevated fuel prices and generate an adjusted pre-tax margin of 3%. We were able to lessen the impact of the weather and air traffic control limitations through proactive measures, which led to an improvement in our completion factor as the quarter progressed with a completion factor of 99% during June and over 99% during the busy Fourth of July week.
In addition, unlike many other carriers, we are not experiencing disruptions due to shortages related to pilot and flight attendant staffing levels. In fact, we have surplus staffing today and a capacity to train 80 additional pilots a month. Contrary to common paradigms and misconceptions about the ULCC segment, we're a highly attractive landing spot for the pilots, given our career growth and resulting pay opportunities as compared to the legacy carriers, along with desirable footprint of bases, including the opening of the Phoenix crew base later this year. To further strengthen our pilot recruitment capabilities, we're working with a major flight school to develop a cadet program, which will provide an opportunity to train 250 zero-time flight applicants per year who might otherwise have chosen a different career path due to employment uncertainty.
Upon completion of training, we will assist in placing them into flying assignments to continue to build experience, and we'll be able to hire them once they reach requisite flying times. As we look forward to the Q3 , we expect the demand environment to remain strong, with RASM growth anticipated to be over 20% versus the comparable 2019 quarter, supported by continued strength in our ancillary revenue per passenger. We will continue to focus on generating profitable growth in the business as we increase utilization and successfully overcome the challenges with the pandemic. Accordingly, we expect to turn a second consecutive quarterly profit in the Q3 with an adjusted pre-tax margin in the range of 1%-5%. I'd like to thank Team Frontier for their continued dedication, professionalism, and commitment to provide safe and reliable service to our customers.
They are at the core of our low fares done right model. With that, I'll now hand the call over to Daniel.
Thanks, Barry, and good afternoon, everyone. Q2 revenue performance was exceptional on many levels. Revenue growth of 43% over the comparable 2019 quarter was driven by a 29% increase in RASM from $0.0927-$0. 1197, along with a 10% increase in capacity over this 2019 quarter. Revenue per passenger grew an impressive 24% to $139, with ancillary revenue contributing nearly $75 of that amount, a record for the business and above our expectations. Ancillary performance was driven by recent product expansion and enhancement, along with strong attachment rates. We will continue to expand and enhance our ancillary offerings to allow our customers to personalize their travel experience and to allow us to continue to offer ultra-low fares.
Given our strong performance and future plans, we're now targeting ancillary per passenger to reach $85 by the end of 2023. We achieved an 84% load factor during the Q2, an improvement of 10 percentage points over the prior quarter. Utilization was an average of 10.9 hours per day, roughly in line with the prior quarter, and we expect a gradual trend towards the 12+ hours we realized in 2019, consistent with our recovery plan. In response to high fuel prices, we designed our second and Q3 average stage length to be between 960 mi and 980 mi, which is considerably below historical levels. We expect to return the airline to pre-pandemic average stages starting in the Q4.
As we build back capacity, our ASM growth relative to 2019 is expected to accelerate during the current quarter, with capacity up 5% in July, 8%-9% in August, and 14%-16% in September, resulting in a higher proportion of our seats being deployed in an off-peak month and creating an approximate 3% drag on RASM in the quarter. Touching on commercial highlights, we recently announced expanded service to and from Las Vegas. Beginning 9 August 2022 , we'll launch service from Harry Reid International Airport to Baltimore, Buffalo, Hartford, and Kansas City. With these new routes, Frontier will serve 57 destinations from our Las Vegas base, making us the fastest-growing airline and one of the top leisure destinations in North America.
In response to strong demand since we launched service at Houston Hobby in May, we're adding a daily nonstop route to Denver beginning in September. Just last month, we expanded our international and Caribbean service from our Tampa base, launching nonstop flights to Montego Bay and San Juan, along with expanded service to Cancún. Lastly, on 8 August 2022, we'll formally break ground for our innovative new terminal at Denver International Airport, where we're planning construction of 14 ground loading gates, which will facilitate expedited boarding and deplaning through the front and rear aircraft doors, leading to shorter turn times. This and other streamlining initiatives across our network are designed to improve operational performance and enhance the customer experience. With that, I'll hand it over to Jimmy Dempsey.
Thank you, Daniel Shurz, and welcome everybody. Q2 results were in line with our guidance. The strong demand environments drove record-setting revenue growth compared to the same quarter in 2019, and along with the exceptional ancillary performance, enabled us to turn our first adjusted profit in over two years. We've employed rigorous financial discipline through this difficult period to ensure Frontier has a strong platform to deliver profitable growth. Results in the Q2 were impacted by elevated fuel prices, resulting in $335 million of fuel expenses at an average fuel cost of $4.41 per gallon. Total operating expense was approximately $900 million, including $9 million of transaction and merger-related costs and $7 million related to an asset impairment, while adjusted non-fuel operating expense was $550 million.
This resulted in a CASM ex-fuel of $0.0724, which was impacted by lower utilization, lower average stage, higher station-related costs, and the short-term cost of surplus crew. Though our CASM ex-fuel is currently elevated, we're still targeting a return to sub-$0.06 during 2023 as our utilization and stage length normalized and seats per departure increase with the planned introduction of the A321neo to help mitigate inflationary pressures on the business. We ended the Q2 o n a strong financial position with $766 million of unrestricted cash and cash equivalents. Frontier is in the enviable position of having access to a substantial liquidity source by leveraging our FRONTIER Airlines World Mastercard and related brand assets should the need arise.
As planned, we have enhanced our pre-delivery payment facility to align with the short-term obligations under the Airbus order book, whereby the facility was increased from $200 million to $280 million. We entered the second quarter with 114 aircraft in our fleet after taking delivery of three A320neo aircraft during the quarter. We expect to take delivery of another 4 aircraft in the fourth quarter or in the third quarter and 8 in the fourth quarter, including the first of 36 A321neos by the end of 2023. Looking forward to the Q3, we expect a continuation of the favorable demand environment we saw in the second quarter. Capacity is anticipated to grow by 8%-10% over the comparable 2019 quarter.
RASM is expected to improve by over 20% in the Q3 versus the comparable 2019 quarter, bolstered by continued strength in ancillary revenue per passenger. Fuel costs are anticipated to be between $3.75 and $3.80 per gallon based upon the blended jet fuel curve on 22 July. Adjusted non-fuel operating expenses are expected to be between $565 million-$585 million in the Q3. The increase from the prior quarter due largely to capacity growth. Adjusted pre-tax margin is expected to be in the range of 1%-5%, constrained by the 3% RASM drag Daniel mentioned earlier. With that, I'll turn the call back to Barry to deliver closing remarks before we move to Q&A.
Thanks, Jimmy. Before closing, I'd like to offer my thoughts on the termination of our merger agreement with Spirit. Obviously, we're disappointed in this outcome and that Spirit shareholders will miss an opportunity to meaningfully participate in the rebound of leisure travel, of which we're in the early stages. Our board took a disciplined approach throughout the course of our negotiations. Rather than overpay for Spirit, the board prioritized the interests of Frontier, our employees, and our shareholders. As a standalone entity and potentially America's ultra-low-cost carrier, Frontier has a fantastic platform for profitable growth underpinned by a strong balance sheet, an unmatched 321neo order book, a clear path to CASM ex below $0.06, and exceptional ancillary performance with plenty of room to run. Collectively, these elements are key contributors to the resiliency of our business model.
I could not be more confident in our future, especially given the growing demand for affordable air travel. Our proven and resilient ultra-low-cost model continues to provide the foundation for our strategy and long-term value creation. Even with rising fuel prices, we continue to keep costs and fares low while generating record revenues and providing reliable service. We have one of the highest completion rates in the industry, and our recent performance further validates our business model and strengthens our confidence. We appreciate everyone's time this afternoon. We will not be commenting any further on the termination of the merger agreement, nor a potential tie-up between Spirit and JetBlue. I am, however, happy to take questions about how we grow our business and add shareholder value as America's ultra-low-cost carrier.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question or a comment at this time, please press star one one. We'll pause for a moment while we compile our Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Jamie Baker with JP Morgan. Your line is open.
Hey, good afternoon, everybody. Airbus cut its production forecast today, also delayed the planned ramp in 320 production rates. Just wondering how you expect that to impact planned capacity over, I don't know, the next 24 months or so, and, you know, whether there's any flexibility within the Indigo portfolio to shift around deliveries, so that you don't slip.
Yeah, look, Jamie, we don't know. I mean, we've been a little focused on our own things right now, so it's maybe we haven't focused on that.
I get it.
Look, I mean, we have a large order book with Airbus and obviously we buy a lot of planes. I know a lot of people have maybe moved some orders around. I'm not sure what this has to do with us. Yes, we do have the ability, as been disclosed before, to move aircraft among the Indigo portfolio carriers that participated in the Dubai order a few years ago. You know, we're unaware of any material differences.
Okay
Versus our order book as we stand today.
Okay. Second, you know, there's no shortage of data at this point, you know, proving that sort of lower-end consumers are certainly trying to find ways to economize. Your third quarter guide looks fine to us. Just curious if you're seeing any change in trip duration. Obviously, lopping off a day of holiday is, you know, one way to save on the aggregate expense of, you know, or any changes in the booking curve. Or maybe your data just implies complete immunity to slowing economic trends. Any thoughts there?
Well, I'll start and I'll let Barry add on, Jamie. It's Daniel. No, we're not really seeing any difference. We've seen no change in trip duration. We've not seen any slowdown in demand. We don't see this at the moment, so we're not being affected at the moment. We're confident that we're offering the right value to customers to keep getting them to come and choose Frontier.
Yeah, I think we have seen two things that are interesting. One is kind of work from home phenomena. We have seen an extension of some people's itinerary. So I think in the composite, there may be some people, Jamie, that are actually cutting off a day. I've read articles just like you have about, you know, some hotels, maybe they cut a day or two off their vacation, but they still go to save money.
Mm-hmm
At the same time, you've got people moving around that are working from home, but really working from somewhere else. So they are actually expanding. The averages, I think, may be clouding that. The one piece of data we do have that is pretty empirical is that we have seen an increase in incomes of our travelers. A significant increase in the $100,000 household income and a significant increase in the $200,000+ household income, which suggests that you are seeing, you know, the buy down effect to Frontier.
Okay. Very interesting. Thank you, gentlemen.
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Duane Pfennigwerth with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.
Hey, thank you. I wanted to ask you about, you know, new markets. I understand you've been, busy and focused on other things. As you sort of think through the implications of, staffing shortages for the industry, staffing shortages for, you know, regional carriers, more white space in small markets, are there any obvious, targets or, markets that you feel are really, constrained or overly constrained from a capacity perspective? I certainly appreciate your comments about not wanting to go there, you know, you have spent a fair amount of time studying potential overlap. What would you might see as the opportunities, that could develop, if they do, pursue a relationship?
I'm gonna let Daniel talk about the more recent kind of phenomena with shortages of regional capacity, and he's probably got some examples because I know he's been exploiting it.
Yeah. Look, we've seen we always, Duane, watch what's going on in the industry. We've seen what we've seen actually. It's less, I think, regional service in the traditional sense. They tend to serve quite small markets. Fundamentally, probably, we do have markets that are even for us a little bit too small. What we've also seen as airlines have consolidated capacity again this year is we've seen a pullback in certain markets. You can see notably, we've looked from our Vegas base.
One of the reasons we went into the markets we went into is you can see a meaningfully reduced capacity in some of those markets, as other airlines have sort of consolidated the way they're flying. For example, Las Vegas-Buffalo, Las Vegas-Hartford, substantial markets, much less competitive service than you would've seen pre-pandemic. There are other examples in our key leisure bases of where we're seeing similar phenomena, and those are the ones we're gonna take advantage of.
As far as your second question, thanks, Duane. I said we were gonna talk about, you know, our exciting future as America's ultra-low-cost carrier. I'll answer your question in that vein. You know, in the event that they do merge, you take a carrier that's probably one of the most similar to us, you slap on 40% more costs, and that creates a lot of runway ahead of us.
Thanks for that. Maybe we'll get you to expand a little bit. You know, there was a period of time, and I don't recall the exact quarter or when, but, you know, to manage your cost, to focus on your cost, you sort of de-emphasized some expensive, you know, Northeast airports, for example. You know, would it ever make sense to come back to, you know, a LaGuardia or, you know, could you envision having a bigger footprint in South Florida if assets became available?
Yeah, look, absolutely. I mean, look, I mean, you're referencing what we did in Newark and some other places. It's not that they were expensive. In addition to being expensive, we were unable to put together an efficient operation with the landing slots that we had. We would absolutely, if we can get the right opportunity in LaGuardia, we would be really excited about it. I think consumers would be too.
Appreciate the thoughts.
Operator, next question.
Oops, my apologies. My line was muted. Our next question comes from Michael Linenberg with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.
Oh, hey, good afternoon, guys, and congrats to getting back to profitability. My first question just on looking at the differentials, the year-over-year or year-over-two-year in sort of your base fare versus your ancillary, and it is interesting, you know, you are obviously successful in pushing both up, which is a good thing in a highly inflationary environment. That ancillary increase was roughly double. I'm curious about, you know, either Barry or Daniel, you know, just they're different products, different price elasticities. Presumably, one is more stickier than the other. It was a big increase. You know, we're talking about $20-$25 or so, plus or minus a few dollars.
What were the big components, or is there just an inflationary piece in there where, you know, just bag fees are now $3-$5 higher, and seat fees and insurance fees are all $3-$5? Is that really what's flowing through here? Because it does look like a step function change, if you could add color.
Right. Look, we took advantage of the pandemic to continue developing new products. It's a mix. It's a mix of everything. It's the inflationary effect. It's new products we've introduced. It's the continued work we've done, and I think where we lead the industry and how we optimize our pricing of our key ancillary products, reflecting what customers want. It's just the continued work to improve this, and that's why we now have confidence. Given what we've seen, we now have confidence just to increase our target to $85 by the end of 2023.
I would just add, Michael, you know, we learned in the pandemic, we used to think that 50/50 was a good split.
Mm-hmm.
You said it just a moment ago, and we use this word, literally, you'll hear this around our office multiple times today. We talk about the stickiness of non-ticket.
Mm-hmm.
The truth is fares and fuel are largely out of our control, but non-ticket is not.
Mm-hmm.
What we like about non-ticket is that we can get closer and closer. I mean, I can't guarantee profits, but we can get closer and closer to protect our profits going forward. That's why we've laid out today that we plan to get to $85 by the end of next year. That is to not only, you know, get us back in profit, solid profitability in 2023, but make sure that we can maintain it for decades to come.
Great. Just my second, Barry, because you brought this up, and it seems like, you know, you guys are sort of on the leading edge here with respect to, you know, zero-hour pilots and helping them get through, you know, training and getting them to, I guess, that 250 hours. The question that hasn't been well answered is, okay, they're at 250, you know, at what point do you get them to 1,500? I know there's Part 135 opportunities, but there's only so many that are out there. It sounds like you studied this. What is it, a two-year, three-year? What's the timeframe from getting from 250 to 1,500?
It seems like, you know, everybody talks about it, and it seems like you get them through the program, and they're ready to fly, but it sounds like it's a few years. Can you just give us at least a little bit more, sort of your thoughts on that?
Yeah. I'll start it off. We thought there might be some questions, so we're fortunate today to have Brad Lambert, our Vice President of Flight Operations.
Great.
There's a couple phases. You've got to get your private at roughly 40 hours. You know, you gotta get to commercial 250 CFI, CFII. Yes, you can get an ATP at 1,000 if you have 60 college hours of aviation. You can get it at 1,250 if you have 30 college hours, and you get it at 1,500 if you don't have any college hours of aviation.
Mm-hmm.
The cadet program that we're rolling out will target you know using some of the college hours to limit that. Brad, we're really excited about it, and Brad can tell you more about the kind of opportunities that we're gonna work with them to do here and abroad to build their hours from 250 up.
Great.
This is Brad Lambert.
Hey, Brad.
Hey. We've definitely got opportunities, obviously, with Part 135 carriers. You're right, there's limited capacity there. But the nice thing about our agreement with ATP is they are the biggest, I'll call it manufacturer of pilots out there in, you know, in the country.
Mm-hmm.
There's lots of opportunities there for them to instruct and build time very quickly. We look at the program 24 months or so, but again, we wanna control our destiny, and we think we've got enough opportunity for them to build the flight time up to the ATP minimums.
Okay, great.
So, uh.
The 24 months, that's what I'm looking for. That's actually very helpful. Thanks.
We're also looking for international opportunities as well. You know, there's a lot of other countries out there that accept USA licenses, and we can fly them at 250 hours build time up to that ATP minimums.
Oh, very good. Thank you.
One moment before our next
The main thing.
Sorry, go ahead.
The main thing I would just say, Michael, is we're just gonna no longer, you know, entertain these speculations that we're gonna run out of pilots. We're gonna source our pilots and have control of it.
One moment before our next question. Our next question comes from Scott Group with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.
Hey, thanks. Good afternoon. As you think about the standalone, you know, growth potential, I guess what I'm trying to understand is what do you think your capacity growth looks like over the next several years in an environment where Spirit is standalone and then where JetBlue acquires Spirit? I don't know if that's in violation of your, you know, what you wanna talk about, but like, I guess I'm trying to understand like, how your growth story is different now on a standalone basis, and how do you navigate sort of that regulatory uncertainty potentially over the next year plus? Do we have to wait for some of that accelerated growth?
It's Daniel. We already have an aggressive growth plan. Next year as we return to normal utilization levels, we anticipate 30% growth in 2023 over 2022 as we fully get the airline back to normal utilization. Then going forward after that, we already have a fleet plan that provides for 15%-20% a year growth. What happens in the environment? What happens in potential combinations? We could always accelerate it, move it closer to 20%, if necessary, above 20%. We will watch for opportunities by controlling our costs, as discussed, by driving our non-ticket. We are controlling our destiny, and we can make the choices about where we fly.
Okay. Did I hear that the plan is to grow 30% next year versus 22%?
Yeah, Scott, it's Jimmy Dempsey here. Given that we've constrained capacity across this year, next year as you move back to full utilization, you get to 30%, slightly above 30% growth.
Okay, great. Maybe just last thing, just as I focus on more, the report and the guidance. Can you just talk about the monthly TRASM trends? I know you're talking about 20%+, but, you know, if you feel like it should be closer to the upper twenties you did in Q2, any color there. Thank you.
We are seeing right now typical seasonality. We're not gonna go into more detail on that. What we're seeing for Q3 is just typical seasonality patterns. Because, obviously, the issue as we discussed is because we have the higher amount of capacity growth at the end of the quarter, because we're growing 5% in July and 14%-16% in September, that is creating a drag on the overall RASM for the quarter of around 3 points because we've pushed more capacity growth into an off-peak month.
Gotcha. Okay. Thank you guys. Appreciate it.
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Savanthi Syth with Raymond James. Your line is open.
Hey, good afternoon. Just to follow up on Jamie's question earlier. It looks like maybe even this year, you're kind of aircraft deliveries are getting a little bit delayed. Are you seeing that delay this year? Just as you kind of plan out your capacity, you know, what's your confidence level and, you know, how much of that 30% is dependent on fleet deliveries versus just getting utilization back up?
Roughly half of it is fleet deliveries.
Yeah.
The other half comes from increased utilization.
Okay.
Yeah. Savanthi Syth, near term, we've seen some delays. I mean, it's been relatively modest. It's nothing like we're obviously on the Airbus program. Nothing compared to the Boeing program. You know, you're seeing six-week delays, four to six weeks, eight-week delays in aircraft deliveries for some of the aircraft. But all relatively near-term stuff.
The delays have generally been in days and weeks. You know, we typically put in a 45-day, up to 45-day kind of cushion between a delivery and when we have it scheduled to fly.
That's helpful. If I might, one thing you've shown last year and this year throughout is kind of a nimbleness to kind of react to the demand environment or whatever the environment brings with COVID or anything else. Just kind of curious, you know, what kind of environment you're assuming in that 30%, and if we do see a slowing down or kind of a recessionary environment, what you're kind of comfortable maybe moderating that to or how should we think about that?
Well, look, I think we're always probably the fastest to react if things were to dramatically change. That's, you know, I think our confidence in the 30% is driven by a couple things. One, we're headed to sub $0.06 CASM. If anybody can be successful with airline business, it'll be with low prices if demand were to fall off. We'll be one of the few that can afford to actually carry low prices. It will be further subsidized, not just on the cost side, but by the fact that we have the $85 target by the end of next year in non-ticket, and we're already producing $75. We're pretty confident in the growth.
Obviously, we'll reevaluate that if there were a deeper recession than what we're seeing. So far the demand looks very good and we've seen some seasonal changes, but nothing major. I think what seems to be missed in the airline space is even if there is a recession, the capacity cuts are already built in. I think if you track back what we should have had with normal GDP growth over the last three years, we are significantly lower than where you would normally see capacity. You know, if you get a 10%-20% cut from a recession, well, the cuts are already in.
That's why you're seeing, you know, a lot of the pricing power across the industry, even as other industries are having a tough time right now.
Good point. Thank you.
One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Helane Becker with TD Cowen. Your line is open.
Thanks very much, operator. Hi, everybody, and thank you very much for the time. I just have two questions. To follow up that comment, Barry, that you just made about a capacity reduction already factored in, what do you think that the hiring will look like at the airline in an environment where things do slow? Would you pause the hiring, or would you just continue to forge ahead?
No, I think we would be the last airline to stop hiring or slow, even slow hiring, because when you're the lowest cost producer in the space, you're the first one that should be growing.
Got it. That's helpful. The other question I have, I'm not sure how you can know the answer, but what responsibility do you think the pilots union itself, like ALPA National, has for training pilots? They seem to want a lot of, I don't know, assurances, but they don't seem to want to accept responsibility for building up the pilot ranks. You know, do they bear any responsibility? You know, in your negotiations with your pilots, can you get them to accept some of that?
I guess I'm not understanding your question.
Well, think about it this way. If you want to become a pilot, the $250,000 cost is 100% on you. Part of the reason for that is the rules around which you can become a pilot. It's not that easy a career path, right? If you don't go military or something like that. Don't you think ALPA itself bears some responsibility for helping an 18-year-old or a 22-year-old get the necessary hours in order to build a career?
I don't know it's ALPA's responsibility. I think it's been. Maybe they have some. Everyone has a responsibility across the entire aviation community. I mean, just to clarify, it's not $250,000. It's less than $100,000 to get your commercial. Yes, if you paid for all of your hours and you didn't get any type of job, yes, it would cost considerably more, maybe in the $250,000-$300,000 range. But the challenge with that, you're not gonna be as good a pilot as someone that we can hold through our cadet program, place at a great place where they get good training and they get real life experiences, flying from a commercial perspective.
Look, I just think, you know, we as an industry and overall need to take responsibility. I can just tell you what we're doing. Look, we see the shortages coming down the line, and while we haven't had challenges, we're just taking control of our destiny, and we're gonna have the sourcing that we need. No different than we source airplanes, engines, parts, everything else. We're gonna source training of pilots from zero hours. To be quite honest, I mean, in the last few hours, it's been one of the most exciting times at Frontier. I mean, I'm looking. Our head of HR is right across smiling right now. I mean, he's been inundated today.
We have a bunch of flight attendants that already are like, "Hey, I've always wanted to be a pilot." This is really exciting to have a program that kind of handholds them, gets them through it, helps them get set up with a really good training program, and then gets them the right type of experience that they need to be safe pilots. Not only are we gonna control the sourcing of our pilots, but we're also gonna control the quality and the training so that we can ensure that they'll be successful and safe pilots for us. We hope that we can partner with ALPA when they come in, but they are generally not involved until once they become an active line holder or actually a pilot at Frontier.
Got it. Okay, that's really helpful. Thanks, Barry. Have a nice day.
I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Barry Biffle for any closing remarks.
Hey, well, thanks everyone. We appreciate everyone joining us today. Again, as I said, we're excited to be America's ultra-low-cost carrier. Really excited to talk to you soon. Talk to you next quarter.
Conclude today's presentation. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.