While a debt refinancing deal has bought Spirit Airlines (SAVE) until at least the end of the year to avoid bankruptcy, the low-cost carrier is feeling significant pressure to turn its finances around.
Most recently, Spirit announced that it will be furloughing an additional 10% of its pilot workforce in the coming year while other moves to both bring in more income and cut expenses include reworking its booking model to include fare classes, selling 23 old Airbus (EADSF) planes cutting a large number of nonprofitable routes.
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Related: Spirit Airlines makes big change to bring down costs
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These are the latest route cuts announced by Spirit Airlines
At the start of October, Spirit significantly cut its Boston service with canceled flights to Logan International from Chicago, Charlotte, Columbus, Houston and Pittsburgh.
The latest cost-cutting measures will result in the cancellation of an additional 23 routes in different parts of the country. Some of the most heavily affected cities include Dallas-Fort Worth, Fort Lauderdale, and Charlotte—routes to the latter city from Dallas, Houston, and Los Angeles are among the ones cut.
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As first reported by travel website The Points Guy, other cut routes include flights to Dallas from Houston, San Antonio and Tampa and flights to Charlotte from Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, Tampa and Los Angeles. A route between Boston's Logan International Airport and Newark Liberty was only restarted in May after being cut in November 2021 but is now being cut again due to low traffic (the entire flight takes just under 90 minutes).
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Amid widespread cuts, Spirit also adds some new flights
Some of these routes have been canceled immediately while others will be phased out throughout December and January, Spirit has not yet commented on the cancelations.
In addition to these cuts, Spirit Airlines has also committed to running seven new routes in which it sees potential and profit. The Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY), in particular, will benefit from new Spirit flights to The Big Easy from Columbus, Indianapolis, San Antonio, and Memphis that will start on Feb. 20, 2025, right as seasonal Mardi Gras tourism demand picks up.
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"We're excited to see Spirit offer nonstop service to the great city of New Orleans for the Mardi Gras season," Memphis-Shelby County Airport Authority Board of Commissioners Chairman Michael Keeney said in a statement. "This gives our passengers a low cost and convenient alternative to driving."
Other new flights announced by Spirit for the spring of 2025 include a Columbus to San Antonio route launching on April 9 and an Atlanta to Indianapolis flight that will begin service on May 7. With the city seeing significant population growth, Atlanta is a new focus for the airline in its effort to get more and different people to take its flights; it will also be launching routes to Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport from San Antonio and Columbus.
"What we've seen over time is that less people are actually flying on Spirit," Spirit Airlines Chief Commercial Officer Matt Klein said during a CBS News interview last July. "So we believe the changes we're making are about attracting new customers."
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