Republic Airways Holdings subsidiary Frontier Airlines is adding six seats to its Airbus A320 fleet.

Frontier senior vice president of commercial Daniel Shurz outlined the additions during a 1 March earnings call with analysts.

Seating capacity on Frontier's 15 A320s will increase from 162 to 168 seats, which should reduce unit costs on the fleet by 3%, said Shurz. The company's fleet projections show Frontier will operate 16 A320s by year-end.

Shurz described the A320 seat expansion as a "highly cost efficient project that will have a quick payback as we continue to see record load factors on Frontier and because our A320s generate the highest load factors of any fleet we operate".

He said the project should be complete by May to ensure Frontier could benefit from the extra seats during the 2012 travel season.

Source: Air Transport Intelligence news