The well known airline Southwest Airlines is gearing up to make a nice bid for the bankrupt low cost carrier Frontier Airlines. This is set to happen when Frontier Airlines emerges from bankruptcy protection later on this year.

Southwest Airlines, which is based in Dallas, confirmed that it is preparing to offer a minimum of $113.6 million for Frontier Airlines. This beats the $108.8 million bid made by Republic Airways. If the take over is successful, this would give Southwest Airlines a bigger foothold on routes coming out of Denver.

Southwest Airlines, which is the largest United States carrier by passenger numbers, has been growing rapidly in Denver since re-entering the market in 2006. However, it still only ranks 3^rd in terms of market share.

Right now, Denver-based Frontier has about 5,000 employees, routes to 50 destinations in the United States, Costa Rica, and Mexico and has about 51 aircrafts.

A Southwest Airlines official said that they have been studying a bid for quite some time and expect to prevail on this one. They also noted that their motivation and thinking behind it was very quite simple. All they are trying to do is get back into growth mode, and Frontier Airlines can help with that dream.

Southwest Airlines did note, if the deal gets the go ahead, that Frontier would operate independently for an unspecified period of time. This would go on until he carrier could be combined into Southwest Airlines. Thus, it is not like Frontier Airlines would just disappear overnight. Moves that are this big take time, and this one is no different.