Florida exp to pounce on Spirit's routes
 

• One additional daily roundtrip flight between:
  • IAH and MCO (Orlando), LAS (Las Vegas), MSY (New Orleans), ATL (Atlanta), BWI (Baltimore) and MIA (Miami)
  • ORD and MCO, FLL, MSY and LAS
  • EWR and MCO and FLL
  • LAX and LAS

“If Spirit suddenly goes out of business it will be incredibly disruptive, so we’re adding these flights to give their customers other options if they want or need them,” said Global Network Planning and Alliances SVP Patrick Quayle.

This schedule expansion means that we will now offer:

• 45 flights/day to MCO
• 30 flights/day to FLL
• 43 flights/day to LAS

Tickets for the new flights will go on sale later today.

ohh how sweet. Very generous of them. lol, Kirby the vulture is wasting no time swooping in eating up the pieces left by Spirit.

as he should…….Kirby occupies a lot of space in your head.

It’s business, not personal, man

He may be an a-hole, but he's our a-hole.

Wishing the best for Spirit pilots.

All these new airplanes have to go somewhere. With the economy slowing down, I think these new flights will drive down legacy yields more than ULCC yields.

Spirit is used to operating with very low yields. Is United? I hope so.

Welcome to capitalism!

Yeah I’m not so sure I’d characterize this action as that.
In case you don’t know MCO/ FLL to EWR is LIKE A BIG FRGN market and EWR is once again slot controlled. If he doesn’t act on that….surely AA maybe even Delta and JB would. If An opportunity such as this is missed and gobbled up by your competitors, one might call that negligence.

Exactly. Either UAL tries to fill the void or someone else will. But either way, the void WILL be filled by someone.

I hope the Spirit folk land on their feet. Every time I’ve commuted on Spirit, the crews and gate agents are always very helpful and nice (to me, anyway).

but, what do you expect the business leaders or competitors to do? Sit back just hope it works out for the other company? Every competing company is trying to outdo the other. Destroy them, even. This is no different.

I’ll support every displaced pilot as best I can, it I would expect nothing different from any other company.

Did you think they would just sit empty as the industry sits around and weeps the death of some close friend? Get real.

That’s what she said 🤣

As he should. I’d like to see one flight an hour out of every gate in MCO, FLL, TPA, etc from 0600-2000 in order to maximize every available ounce of flying possible. This is a business. Kirby and Quayle are a weakness and an opening in these markets and it’s their job to capitalize on that weakness.

With the insane number of aircraft and pilots coming in 2026 (supposedly), we will need to flood the system just to have space to put all these jets and pilots.

not a Kirby disciple but get a grip man. People are trying to run a business here.

It’s weird that only Kirby got flack, but not F9. They did the same thing a few days ago on about 20 NK routes

The big airlines don’t make money flying people.

https://www.economist.com/business/2...airlines-aloft


“You might expect America’s most valuable airline to earn its keep flying passengers. But you would be mistaken. Last year Delta Air Lines notched up an operating profit of $6bn, comfortably ahead of its domestic rivals. Buried in the financial statements, however, was a more revealing point. Without the revenue from its loyalty programme, it would have operated at a loss.”

He predicts F9 will be gone by the end of next year according to comments made recently. If his track record is any indicator… it wouldnt be the worst idea to start shorting them.

United lags at least 3 other airlines in Florida capacity so it makes sense to be interested should an opportunity present. I like that our pilot group isn’t high fiving each other on forums and elsewhere (like SWA pilots would do in the early 2000s as the big 5 legacies floundered post 9–11)but are mostly showing concern for the effected pilots at Spirit.

Not true. Anyone that can actually read a balance sheet and income statement can understand this is fake.

Delta didn't have over $6B in "credit card revenue". Even if it did, there were costs associated with it. If you remove the people that traded in credit card miles to fly, you also have to remove the costs associated with them. At Delta's profit margin that would be billions of costs. Which would still make them wildly profitable.

If Delta and United can't make money with the scale they both have how did Spirit, Jetblue etc ever make money? So small airlines can be profitable because they have "great management" but large ones with scale only make money because of credit cards? Ask any pilot from a small airline and they will tell you how they are itching to merge with some other airline because they need "scale to compete with the Big 3". But if big airlines aren't really profitable then why do they want to be part of a bigger airline?

United made $5B last year, but only took in $1.9B in "all other revenue" including credit card miles, club memberships, etc. Even without that United would have been profitable. Total actual profit to United last year from credit card miles was likely less than $1B of its $5B. Still more profit than all other US airlines combined, not counting Delta.

These bad take articles only make people feel good about hating on successful airlines. There is little factual information in them.

It’s been debunked by all real news outlets but that won’t stop the ULCC lovers from repeating the one rag that proclaims it.

Well said. I haven't come across that kind of opportunistic talk about Spirit either. Should I hear it, I have a feeling that a history lesson will be in order to compensate for a lack of long term perspective in this industry.

LOL. The exact same 'quote' I was thinking. Call him Bob Crandall Jr.

For something to even start to be considered for a pilot base, much less a hub, it needs to at the bare minimum start with service to all the existing hubs. FLL and MIA do not even have service to LAX. Those airports are a far ways away from being a pilot base, much less a hub

That would quickly change if a lot of gates suddenly became available. The big constraint right now is gates. United currently has only 4 FLL gates.

GUM is a pilot base. How many direct GUM flights do we have to hubs?

They just said they want to ramp up ORD DEN and IAH before opening a new pilot base which probably won't happen until 2027. FLL is a low margin leisure destination and most airlines lose money flying into there. They also said PHX, BOS and SEA were the most likely places for new pilot bases.

Ridiculous comparison and you know it. GUM is clearly different.

... due to the largest carrier out of there being a ULCC. I suppose the same could be said about MCO and LAS, yet we have bases there.
There are a lot of wealthy people who live in the area and a lot of wealthy people who visit there.

The largest carrier in LAS is Southwest. They are not a ULCC. Just because a ULCC flies there doesn't make it a low margin airport.

I never said "we don't have pilot bases in low margin cities". I said that FLL is a low margin airport, which it is. I wonder how many of those "wealthy people" are flying on Spirit?

Don’t believe FLL is as low margin as you say. The demographics have changed here in South Florida a lot over the past 5 years. We have more wealth than ever before. More snowbirds that find they’re staying all year too.

As a native S Floridian I will say the demographic shift here is not great in a lot of ways. It is great for our economy though, and hopefully good for my career.

I used to live in LAS. It's a low margin airport. With a lot of ULCC flights daily.

And a lot of those wealthy people are likely flying Spirit. FLL's current low margin fares are due to Spirit's (and JetBlue) large presence there.

Are you implying that United won't want to pick up additional gates in FLL should gates become available?

The gates that would be available if given up by spirit are apparently not located near United existing gates (different terminal?). There would be challenges.

Yields out of FLL are still very low…

There’s a solid 5-6 airports we all know to check for jumpseaters. FLL is one of them. Can’t be that low.

Yes, that's correct. United's in terminal 1 and Spirit's in terminal 3 and 4.
You've never seen an airport reshuffle gates? LAX did it less than a decade ago when United gave up all of their terminal 6 gates. American ended up the winner (LAX shuffle was Kirby's baby when he was at American) in interconnecting terminals 4,5,6; United maintained terminal 7 and 8. Delta moved to terminal 3 but their Sky Club remained in terminal 5 (IIRC) for quite a while before it finally got moved over to terminal 3. I'd expect the same here.
It doesn't even have to be much of a shuffle.

There will be FLL gates becoming available due to AeroCap terminating 37 Neo leases (and another 30 some Neos on order)... Spirit is not going to be able to keep the current number of gates there.

United's network planners aren't going to sit there with their thumbs up their butts doing nothing when gate space becomes available ... at any airport.

To add to this, think about how in the last year when Frontier gave up all their A terminal gates in DEN so they could use the outdoor gates with jet stairs at the other end.

Didn't take long for us to paint blue over the green and start operating out of them.

LOLZ! The hub that smallsack wanted to shut down due to low yields...

I still mourn the loss of SEA (I had no desire to be based there, but it would have helped with expansion in the west). Fortunately, that was the only hub smallsack closed before they fired him.

Low margin refers to non-full fare leisure travels.

The premium market is full fare refundable business tickets with connections.

Snowbirds are low margin travelers.