Frontier to Link Denver, Dominican Republic with Nonstop Flights
Denver-based Frontier Airlines recently announced some good news for vacationers heading to the powdery white sands of Punta Cana – the most popular resort area in the most popular country in the Caribbean. Starting June 9, Frontier is going to fly there nonstop, initially once a week on Saturdays.
That's a big deal for people who live around Denver (or for that matter, around most places in the Mountain West). Because until now, unless you were on a charter flight your airline took you to the Dominican Republic by way of Miami, Atlanta, New York or other places (sometimes a couple of places) where you needed to change planes along the way. And you likely got there too pooped out – some flight routings take as long as 17 hours – to do anything but hit the sack that night.
The Frontier flight will get you there in just six hours, in time for a few hours of flaking out on the beach, dinner that evening and a night of shaking your booty to Dominican merengue, Haitian compas, Puerto Rican salsa or Jamaican reggae bands.
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The DR, as the locals call the Dominican Republic, hosts a whopping 4 million stayover visitors a year, many more than on other Caribbean islands, according to the Caribbean Tourism Association. Look on the map, and you'll spot the DR about 650 miles southeast of Miami on the eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola (Haiti is on the western third) tucked away between Cuba and Puerto Rico.
Look closer, and you'll see the DR has several major resort areas. The largest and most visited is Punta Cana, a 100-mile-long strip of talcumy beaches dotted by hotel-resorts, many bearing the same brands – Barcelo, Dreams, Iberostar, Melia, Riu, Secrets and the like – you'll find on the Riviera Maya and other major resorts in Mexico.
Frontier's new flights, slated to run this summer each Saturday through Aug. 4, will depart Denver at 8:05 a.m. and touch down in Punta Cana at 3:30 p.m. Coming back, the flights will leave Punta Cana at 4:20 p.m. and arrive in Denver at 8:30 p.m.
