Frontier Flies 164 Jets, After Handing Back 37 Young A320neos Early

Frontier Airlines has 164 planes. That is the fleet in its third-quarter report to the SEC, for September 30, 2026: 164 Airbus A320-family jets, every one of them leased.

Six months earlier it had 183. In between, Frontier paid to end the leases on 37 of its A320neos years ahead of schedule, in the same year its closest rival, Spirit, stopped flying for good.

How Many Planes Does Frontier Have?

164, as of September 30, 2026. The count covers the jets Frontier operates and leaves out the 168 Airbus aircraft it had on firm order at the end of 2025.

The number has already moved. Frontier returned the last eight of its early-return A320neos in October 2026 and expects up to 10 new A321neos before the year is out, so the fleet will swing between about 156 and 166 by December.

Frontier’s fleet, type by type

Frontier flies one aircraft family, the Airbus A320, in four versions. The table tracks each one across the four most recent quarter ends.

The shape of the fleet is changing faster than its size. Frontier’s A320neo count fell from 94 to 68 in six months, while the bigger A321neo kept arriving, and by September 30 there were more A321neos than A320neos.

An A321neo carries 240 people on Frontier against 186 on an A320neo. Fewer, larger jets is how an ultra-low-cost carrier spreads one crew and one gate slot across more paying seats, the core of the ultra-low-cost model.

The 27 older ceo jets, 21 A321ceos and six A320ceos, did not change all year. About 83% of the fleet is now the neo family, with the newer, more fuel-efficient engines.

Why Frontier gave back 37 A320neos

Airlines usually return their oldest jets. Frontier did the opposite: it ended leases on young A320neos that still had two to eight years to run, and paid for the privilege.

The first deal, with the lessor AerCap, sent 24 A320neos back in the second quarter of 2026. Frontier booked a $139 million charge for it in the first quarter, and AerCap agreed in return to finance 10 future Frontier deliveries in 2028 and 2029 through sale-leasebacks.

The second deal, signed in the third quarter, returned 13 more A320neos: five by September 30 and the other eight in October. That one cost $134 million in charges, and Frontier is replacing the capacity with 10 directly leased A321neos from AerCap, five in the fourth quarter and five in early 2027.

The trade made sense once Spirit was gone. Frontier needed bigger aircraft, not more of them, and it was already flying each jet far more hours a day. How the two airlines compared before the shutdown is in our Frontier vs Spirit breakdown.

Why the numbers differ

Search this question and you will see answers from “150+” to 183. Each is a real number from a different date, in a year when Frontier’s fleet rose by seven and then fell by 19.

176: the year-end figure

176 is the fleet in Frontier’s 2025 annual report, up from 159 a year earlier. It is the most widely quoted recent number, and it was out of date by spring, once the AerCap returns began.

183: the peak

Frontier had 183 jets on March 31, 2026, its largest fleet so far. It took delivery of seven new aircraft that quarter while the 24 jets it had agreed to return were still flying.

“About 164” and “150+”: older snapshots

Some sites say “approximately 164 aircraft as of mid-2025”, which is correct for June 30, 2025 and is a coincidence with today’s count, not a confirmation of it. Some airline-data listings still carry a “150+ Airbus narrowbodies” line written when the fleet was smaller.

Fleet trackers add their own spread. They list returned and stored jets under the airline’s history, so a tracker can show dozens of former Frontier A320s that no longer fly for it.

Where Frontier’s fleet is going

At the end of 2025, Frontier had 168 A320neo-family jets on firm order with Airbus: 20 A320neos and 148 A321neos. Its 2025 annual report said it expected to operate 292 A320neo-family aircraft by the end of 2031.

That growth will now come later. Frontier agreed with Airbus to push 69 of those deliveries, first scheduled for 2027 to 2030, out to 2031 to 2033.

Every count on this page is a quarter-end figure, and the next one, for December 31, 2026, arrives with Frontier’s fourth-quarter results in early 2027.

How Frontier’s fleet compares

Frontier’s old rival is gone. Spirit flew 114 jets when it shut down on May 2, 2026, 50 fewer than Frontier flies today, as our count of how many planes Spirit Airlines has explains.

Against the big carriers it is still small. Southwest had 803 jets on the same date, and American, United and Delta each fly more than 1,300 counting their regional partners, as our ranking of the biggest airlines in the US shows.