I spent some time looking through the actual agreements and FAA documents because I was tired of hearing guys insist JetBlue will just absorb everything. The reality is more structured and more complex than that. BCAD is actually very transparent about the process and all of these documents I pulled this information from are posted to the BCAD website. This is strictly for informational purposes only and I think many of us could benefit reading this info from the source documents individually as well. Alright, let’s get into it.

Fort Lauderdale is a covered airport under AIR-21. That means when one or two airlines control more than half the passenger traffic, the airport has to follow a formal competition plan to keep new entrants from getting locked out. Spirit and JetBlue together were well past that threshold, so the county is obligated to avoid handing a monopoly position to any single carrier.

The vast majority of gates at FLL are preferential non-exclusive leases. The number was to the tune of 86%. Spirit held those in Terminal 4. In practice that meant Spirit got first call on the gate for the flights it scheduled, but the county retained the right to put other carriers in during idle periods. A good example of this is listed in exhibit C. You can see United controls only 4 gates on a preferential basis. If you look in the company ref pages, however, we have a much higher number of gates listed that we can park at. These are county controlled gates. So we get priority at ours, but we can request usage at the county ones on a different preferential basis also outlined in the agreement that is irrelevant to this topic. Anyways, neither we nor spirit nor any other airline ever owned the space outright. Now that operations have stopped, the preferential right evaporates and the gates revert to county control.

That reversion happens automatically under the signatory lease. Each preferential gate has a utilization threshold. The airline has to operate either six departures and six hundred departing seats per gate per day, or eight hundred seats. When Spirit shut down and those numbers went to zero, the default and abandonment clauses kicked in immediately. No twelve month review period. No court proceedings. The county just follows its own rules and recaptures the space.

Gates are not auctioned off to the highest bidder. This is a rumor I keep hearing from other UA guys, “oh we can outbid anyone”. No. The county uses a Schedule Submission Policy where airlines file their proposed schedules by season. The dates are listed in the source document but it’s effectively a quarterly bid packet. The resource planning team then allocates gates based on a published priority ladder. Continuous service from the prior season sits at the top, followed by new entrant carriers, then existing carriers adding routes. Late filings and charters fall lower. If two airlines have the same priority and want the same time slot, tiebreakers go to the route with higher regional passenger demand and higher frequency. It is an administrative process built around throughput, not a bidding war.

Bankruptcy law does not let Spirit sell the gates either. The lease contains an anti assignment clause requiring county consent, and the agreement states it is an executory contract, not property of the estate. Once the airline stopped flying and the county recaptured the gates under the default provisions, there was nothing left for the bankruptcy court to monetize.

There is also a financial incentive for the remaining carriers to spread the flying around. FLL operates on a residual rate model where the signatory airlines collectively backstop the airport's costs. The landing fee rate essentially divides net expenses by total landed weight. Spirit was a big piece of that weight. If one carrier takes too many gates but does not backfill the full schedule, unit costs rise for everyone including that carrier. So it is in nobody's interest to sit on underutilized gate space.

The last point I’ll mention is the new five gate Terminal 5 opens later this year, adding capacity that is entirely separate from the Spirit bankruptcy. That’ll give the county flexibility to place expanding airlines somewhere new while the Terminal 4 recapture and restructure plays out.

The primary documents I used in this research are the FLL Competition Plan, the BCAD Schedule Submission Policy, the FAA Airport Business Practices report, and the Broward County signatory lease agreement. I am happy to point anyone toward the specific docs if they want to read the legislation themselves. That is all, you all are dismissed.

 

TLDR;

We may not necessarily be the most likely to get the gates, but JetBlue is definitely the least likely.

 

FLL is a low margin leisure market. The two largest airlines there are Jetblue and formerly Spirit and neither one of them were likely making significant profit there, if any at all. I can see adding some capacity in there, but I don't think there is a massive desire to go in there more than to just add a few more flights feeding our hubs like we added in the LAX flight.

Also since the JB partnership people can just book on Jetblue and connect to us in of our hubs now anyway so its even less likely we really need to have much more of a presence there. Case in point is if you want to book a flight from FLL to HNL on the Jetblue app then every option is on United. Even from FLL to SMF which Jetblue serves but not directly, if you sort by duration or arrival time, the first 10 options it gives you to buy tickets are all United flights.

I can see getting more LGA gates or other high value airports, but not really FLL.

 

I totally agree with the sentiment. I grew up in FLL and I would love nothing more than to have a base back there, but even with that I think it still makes no sense for us as a company. The margins are low and the JB agreement we have sort of gets what we want out of it for now.

Ultimately, I’m sure Willis is looking into it and will make the best decision given the data they have, but for the time being I’m sick of hearing the “well buy the gates” and the “JetBlue is already taking them” rumors.

 

meant to quote this

 

Thank you for doing this research. I also grow very tired of the “Well I heard at Standards”, “a guy I know at TK”, or “a guy on my jumpseat” types.

I certainly don’t have the time to research these things, so Thanks for doing so.

My question to you is:

Since Spirit has ceased operations, would FLL still be an AIAR 21 airport?……since I don’t know but I would guess JetBlue doesn’t account for greater than 50% of traffic…in fact Wikipedia states <20%…..maybe you have more accurate stats.

If however this is not the case….would the very transparent gate distribution process (that was so well explained by you) still be legally mandated?

 

Not sure if you have ever been to a Standards Meeting but they include sessions with Kirby, Quayle etc which is a much more direct and reliable source than someone on a jumpseat or anyone at TK. Especially when their response is a result to a specific question. I have yet to hear something that was stated at a Standards Meeting by either of them that turned out to be false. Same with the CA upgrade classes, since Kirby and/or Quayle participate in those as well.

I've heard pilots at other airlines say "Well I heard Kirby wants to buy us because...." and when asked he always refutes it with an explanation why. The canned response of "well if he was going to do it he wouldn't tell you" but then I guess they will tell the pilots at the other airline that he wants to acquire them lol.

 

I wasn’t really accusing you….

Meetings, conferences and Discussions even by Kirby or many high ups is still at the end of the day, dialogue, not official published information….I think there is a difference. Look it, I was merely thanking Mickey for actually looking up official sources rather than rely on unofficial unpublished and unrecorded dialogue however essential it may seem be. In my time at B6 at least, there were similar opportunities to engage with upper management. I can tell you that even though you are hearing directly from them………that doesn’t mean they are always telling the truth.

I ve been on this website long enough to form my own conclusions on the credibility of certain users here.

 

As of the most recent data available from BTS, the market share for Spirit + JetBlue at FLL had already dropped below 50% even before Spirit shut down. The FAA updates the list of covered airports every government fiscal year based on data from the previous calendar year. So Spirit shutting down won't affect the FY27 list, but FLL might not be a covered airport anyway based on the increased share of other carriers in CY25. But in any case it's still a covered airport for FY26 so definitely no changes before September 30.

 

Sort of the case, not exactly though. Once the airport establishes a plan, it shifts to an update categorized as OWT, or only when triggered. In addition, the FY 26 plan is based on FY 24 emplacement data, so in a way, it’s a 2 year data lag. So in this case, it drops below 50% in FY 26, so by that metric, it’ll reflect in the FY 28 plan.

Source: https://www.faa.gov/airports/aip/competition-plan-covered-airports/covered-airports-list