The original Frontier Airlines Frontier Airlines was a local service carrier, a scheduled airline in the United States formed by a merger of Arizona Airways, Challenger Airlines, and Monarch Air Lines on June 1, 1950. Headquartered at the now-closed Stapleton International Airport in Denver, Colorado, the airline ceased operations on August 24, 1986.[ A new airline using the same name was founded eight years later in 1994. The new Frontier merged with Air Wisconsin. Frontier, New York Air, and Continental were all under Texas Air Corp. Frank Lorenzo (aka a greed driven CEO bent on destroying these airlines) drove all three airlines into bankruptcy. IMO this guy was a real moron. Hundreds of Continental and Frontier employees lost their jobs in Denver during the Oil Bust of the mid-198's.