While it was founded in Detroit as a charter air company in the 1960s, Spirit Airlines (SAVE) eventually built a large market offering low-cost flights to popular vacation destinations and moved its headquarters to Florida's Miramar in 1999.
Flights from cities such as Miami, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, Fort Myers and West Palm Beach to other parts of the country make up the main bulk of the airline's route network while the flight between Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL) and Atlanta's Hartsfield Jackson (ATL) is the airline's most widely-booked — in January 2024, Spirit ran nearly 300 flights between the two cities.
Related: This is why you won't be able to get a low-cost flight to Tulum anytime soon
As Spirit Chief Commercial Officer Matt Klein told a Points Guy reporter during the Routes America conference in Colombia, the airline is currently working out its summer and fall route network to create more "connection cities" and spread out its presence across the country to go beyond its current Florida dominance.
Veronika Bondarenko
Spirit Airlines wants to grow 'connection cities,' move away from Florida
"We're going to start looking at doing some more intentional connectivity in some cities," Klein said during an informal chat at the conference. "The reason for that is being able to try some new routes out, or bring back some routes we've done in the past. If [the flights] have proper connectivity, that allows for more revenue generation."
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The latter is particularly important given that Spirit has had a string of unprofitable quarters, recently reporting a $183.65 million net loss despite revenue of $1.2 billion, while the "Hail Mary" plan of being acquired by New York-based JetBlue Airways (JBLU) has been blocked by a federal judge in February 2024.
As a result, the airline is looking for different ways to turn around its finances and have income coming in from multiple markets. According to Klein, Spirit plans to make Fort Lauderdale into even more of a connecting city for passengers traveling to Caribbean and Latin American destinations but in general will cut some flights out of the state — as this is where it faces competition from a number of other airlines, Spirit expects to cut some of its flights from Orlando and Miami to cities where demand hasn't been the strongest.
'We're going to have to start moving things around...'
"We're going to have to start moving some things around," Klein said. "Part of it is operationally driven, and part of it is also commercially driven where we think there may be better opportunities to match up supply and demand."
The airline has also needed to rework its flying schedule after engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney recalled a number of engines that Spirit used in its planes last year. While Spirit hoped to start flying from Fort Lauderdale to the new Felipe Carrillo airport in Tulum on March 28, those plans have now been put off indefinitely as the plane that it had marked for the flight had the Pratt & Whitney engine and cannot be used.
While the airline has been plagued with bankruptcy speculations, shares have been rising steadily after reaching a low following the blocked merger with JetBlue.
