Anyone get the license plate of that truck that just ran over Frontier? I believe it had Texas plates. Yes, for the third time in a month, Southwest has announced it will be adding more flights in Denver. This, of course, happens when everyone else is cutting back all over the place. There’s no question about it . . . Southwest is going in for the kill.

Let’s look at the timeline here:

• April 10 - Frontier Files for Chapter 11 reorganization
• April 22 - Southwest announces flights from Denver to Portland and Indianapolis as well as additional flights to Las Vegas and San Antonio, all routes that overlap with Frontier
• May 7 - Southwest announces flights from Denver to Sacramento, Ft Lauderdale, and New Orleans (the latter being the only city to which Frontier doesn’t fly) as well as an additional flight to Phoenix
• May 22 - Southwest announces flights from Denver to San Francisco and Omaha, both Frontier cities

This has been an unbelievably quick ramp-up for Southwest, and when all is said and done, the airline will be up to 95 daily flights at a place that’s only seen Southwest planes (this time around) for a little over 2 years. Why is this happening? Well, Southwest smells blood in the water, of course. With Frontier in bankruptcy looking for financing, Southwest is making its strongest case possible that there’s no need for Frontier to exist any longer.

So now Frontier finds itself in a very tough spot. How can the team over there convince the money men (and women) that they are worthy? Well, the airline’s plan to fly to smaller cities where Southwest won’t fly can only help. But with the price of fuel going up and demand softening, it’s still going to be very hard to build that case. Sean Menke and the rest of the Frontier team are going to have a lot of sleepless nights this summer. If they can pull out financing, I will be very impressed.