First Data Corp. chief executive Michael Capellas said Friday that he didn't force Frontier Airlines into bankruptcy.

The numbers did.

I had been meaning to ask Capellas about this since Denver's favorite airline blamed Capellas' credit-card processing company for its Chapter 11 filing last month. I didn't get the chance until Capellas took questions from the crowd at the Southeast Business Partnership's annual meeting in the Denver Tech Center.

"We have probably one of the most dedicated customer orientations I've ever seen," said Capellas, who has been chairman of Compaq Computer, president of Hewlett- Packard and CEO of MCI and is still on the board at Cisco.