Just moments after Spirit said it would cease operations early Saturday morning, many of it competitors started announcing new routes in its former markets.
JetBlue said over the weekend that it would add 11 new routes out of Fort Lauderdale, Spirit's biggest market. JetBlue president Marty St. George said in a call with analysts last week that the company would like to turn Fort Lauderdale into Boston, a major focus city for the carrier. Breeze Airways announced it would launch new routes out of Atlantic City, another Spirit stronghold.
Frontier executives said during a first-quarter earnings call that the ultra-low-cost airline will focus on growing in Fort Lauderdale, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Detroit. Southwest has also added several routes out of Orlando and Las Vegas that overlap with Spirit.
"We positioned ourselves, over the last six to nine months, on launching routes that we thought would be opportunities that come as they reduce their capacity, and with the possibility that they would cease operations," said Frontier CEO Jimmy Dempsey on the call.
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The "connected trip" may be moving closer to reality. A new travel app aims to unify booking, rewards, and real-time trip management into one seamless, end-to-end journey.
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The Middle East Hub Stress Test: What Airlines Build Now Will Define the Next Decade
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SKIFT PODCAST NETWORK
In this clip from Airline Weekly Lounge with Jay Shabat, Gordon Smith, and Meghna Maharishi, the team breaks down how Spirit went from industry-leading profits to collapse in just a few years.
The conversation explains how rising costs, aggressive growth, and changing market conditions created a financial spiral — even while people kept flying.
It’s a sharp look at why airline economics can unravel incredibly fast, even when demand stays strong.
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How are airlines performing around the world? The Skift Travel 200 pulls the data you need to know to understand the market. Paid subscribers get full access here.
