Traveling Blog: Frontier Investor Rescues Wow + Wellness Brands Build Communities + Chinese Women Travelers Surge

November 30, 2018

Editor's Note

What a difference a few hours can make. On Thursday morning, it sure looked like Wow Air, the low-cost, Reykjavik-based airline that made its name during the heyday of Iceland's tourism peak, was on its way to bankruptcy after Icelandair took a pass on buying the carrier. By Thursday night, news surfaced that a white knight had emerged in the form of Bill Franke's private equity firm Indigo Partners, which agreed to invest in Wow, giving it new life. Wow will join Frontier, JetSmart, and Wizz Air in Indigo's portfolio of low-cost airlines. Indigo has certainly been opportunistic in the aviation space, selling its stake in Spirit in 2013 to chase Frontier. It's not clear what Franke sees in Wow that others did not. But he's clearly thumbing his nose at a new batch of naysayers who have emerged recently over whether the low-cost airline model can survive.

— Tom Lowry, Managing Editor

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