Hopes To Speed Up Process With Face-To-Face Meeting

We're willing to talk. That's the message Frontier Airlines sent to the FAA this week, requesting a face-to-face meeting with federal officials in the hopes of speeding up certification of its low-cost Lynx subsidiary.

"If we're in the same room talking, we can solve some issues more quickly," Frontier spokesman Joe Hodas said. The airline hopes to hear back from the FAA within two weeks, reports the Rocky Mountain News.

As ANN reported, Frontier announced earlier this month it would miss its planned October 1 start-up date for the regional carrier, which will fly Bombardier Q400 turboprops. Lynx WILL begin flying, as scheduled, on that date... but passengers will be flying onboard Frontier's mainline CRJ700s and Embraer 170s.

Though the FAA maintains there isn't any one problem holding things up -- just that the back-and-forth approval process takes time -- the type of plane appears to be at least partly to blame, as Lynx hasn't received the agency's approval to fly the recently trouble-plagued turboprops.

Face-to-face meetings usually aren't granted until the FAA has fewer than 200 comments regarding the carrier's training materials, manuals and other required information; Frontier is awaiting word on whether it came in under that threshold.

FMI: www.frontierairlines.com, www.faa.gov