President and CEO of Frontier Airlines, Barry Biffle attends The Future of Everything presented by the Wall Street Journal at Spring Studios on May 17, 2022, in New York City.<\/p>\n
Steven Ferdman | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images<\/p>\n
Frontier Airlines<\/a> CEO Barry Biffle fired back at his counterpart at United Airlines<\/a> who said the deep discount model in the U.S. is dead.<\/p>\n “That’s cute,” Biffle said Wednesday at the Skift Global Forum, a travel conference in New York. “If he’s good at math he would understand that we have a [flight] oversupply issue in the United States.”<\/p>\n Biffle’s comments were a response to United CEO Scott Kirby, who said last week<\/a> at an airline conference in Long Beach, California, that he thought the largest U.S. discounter, Spirit Airlines<\/a>, would go out of business. Spirit in August entered its second bankruptcy<\/a> in less than a year after failing to find sturdy financial footing.<\/p>\n When Kirby was asked why he thought Spirit would shut down, he responded, “Because I’m good at math.”<\/p>\n Kirby added that if Biffle wants Frontier to be the largest<\/a> of the U.S. discount carriers, then he’s going to be the “last man standing on a sinking ship.”<\/p>\n Read more CNBC airline news<\/p>\n Biffle pointed to his airline’s lower unit costs \u2014 $7.50 per available seat mile, excluding fuel, compared with far larger United’s $12.36 per available seat mile in the second quarter \u2014 and said the budget carrier caters to customers who might not be flying at all, as well as those who want a cheap flight but are splurging on other things when traveling, like luxury hotels.<\/p>\n When asked Wednesday about whether Frontier relies on extra capacity left on the table by United, Biffle replied: “That’s like the CEO of Nordstrom saying ‘I allow customers to buy jeans from Walmart.'”<\/p>\n