Spirit Airlines' Shutdown Gives Competitors an Opening — and Passengers May Pay More

Within hours of Spirit Airlines shutting down over the weekend, rival carriers were already rolling out new flight schedules. For months, airlines had been quietly planning routes to fill the gaps left by Spirit's expected collapse, and some of those flights begin this week.

The abrupt closure stranded thousands of passengers overnight Saturday. But the speed of competitors' responses shows how aggressively they're moving to grab Spirit’s valuable airport gates and its customer base — moves that analysts say could push airfares higher.

Even though Spirit accounted for only about 1.5% of U.S. domestic capacity during its reduced summer schedule, the ripple effects could be significant. Barclays analyst Brandon Oglenski noted that removing even that much point-to-point capacity tends to boost pricing power across the industry.

Breeze Airways jumped in with a new route from Atlantic City to Charleston, plus year-round service from Atlantic City to Raleigh-Durham and Tampa. JetBlue, already the second-largest carrier at Spirit's home hub in Fort Lauderdale, announced flights to several new destinations, including Barranquilla and Cali in Colombia; Baltimore; Charlotte; and Indianapolis. It's also adding nonstops from Fort Lauderdale to Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Nashville, and Ponce, Puerto Rico.

Late last summer, after Spirit filed for bankruptcy protection, airlines similarly added service to Spirit-heavy airports. But Spirit's effort to reorganize and cut costs failed when talks for a $500 million Trump administration loan collapsed late last week.

Over the weekend, United, Frontier, American, Southwest, and JetBlue capped fares for stranded Spirit passengers. United reported booking about 14,000 former Spirit customers on Saturday; Southwest took in more than 20,000.

Now the industry is watching other budget carriers. Fuel prices have surged since February, hitting low-cost airlines especially hard because they lack the credit card and corporate travel revenue that protects larger airlines. Frontier reports results Tuesday, and executives will likely face questions about their own survival plans.