Miami International Airport is the place to be as air travel recovers in the United States, and Spirit Airlines will not be left out. The carrier announced a massive expansion into the market, with plans for up to 30 daily flights to 30 destinations. The new operations are expected to launch on October 6, 2021, with destinations added over a six week period.
The growth will not hinder further expansion at the carrier’s main hub in Fort Lauderdale, according to Spokesman Field Sutton. He notes that strong demand exists throughout South Florida and that “Our flying out of MIA is in support of continued expansion in the region.” To that end the carrier also expects to further grow its position as the leading carrier in Fort Lauderdale, exceeding 100 daily flights in July.
The route network offers only one market – Atlantic City – where Spirit will be the sole operator. Diving in to a market with significant competition is not necessarily typical for the airline, but it sees access to the Miami market as worth that risk.
Spirit is starting relatively light on flight frequencies, choosing breadth of coverage and mostly daily service to the destinations. A handful of international destinations will see less than daily flights while LaGuardia is the sole destination planned for double daily flights.
Multiple major moves at Miami
For Miami the new new carrier and routes continues a streak of service additions. Spirit joins Southwest Airlines and JetBlue in adding domestic service at Miami. Emirates also announced it will return to South Florida this summer at MIA rather than Fort Lauderdale.
Pandemic-induced reduced operations, freeing up gate and runway capacity, certainly weigh in to the ability for the airport to attract new service. AirlineWeekly also reports that the airport restructured its costs to airlines, making it more affordable for carriers to establish and operate service in Dade County.
Exact details on the flight schedules and pricing will be released once the airport approves gate and counter access details.
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DaninMCI says
Seems like they are going to outgrow FLL so it makes sense to shift routes to Miami. I’d much rather fly into or out of Miami unless I have a cruise in FLL but I don’t like the idea of being able to find a flight to FLL on Spirit only to find out that I’d have to connect over at MIA to get to a place I want to go, not that Spirit’s IT would allow such a booking.
Seth Miller says
I have every reason to believe that Spirit will offer connections over MIA as the route network comes on line. The MIA-MCO route makes little sense without the connections, for example.
Or are you suggesting it would offer an “airport change” itinerary across the two? That I definitely don’t expect.
DaninMCI says
What I suggest is that many current routes seem to feed into FLL and I’d assume they have outgrown that mess so it makes sense to start routes out of MIA but as a customer it doesn’t do me any good to fly to FLL for say a central american flight out of MIA. It’s worse than flying AA yo LGA for a flight out of JFK which they force on me for awards.
Seth Miller says
I don’t expect Spirit will sell change-of-airport connections. I do expect that it will sell some of the Caribbean routes via Miami, though.
DaninMCI says
I totally agree with you that they won’t sell flights with change-of-airport connections. which seems like an issue. It’s like they will have two route maps unless you are in one of their hubs. I usually fly Spirit out of MCI or STL. When you try to book cash tickets it’s bit hard to get the route you want with them (unless you are flying to a hub in which case I don’t care if I end up in FLL or MIA that much) but it seems some award routes won’t work at all. They have really improved their systems in the last 5 years so it’s getting better but I think it will be interesting to see if they end up moving the majority of their operations over to MIA just due to capacity needs. Like Jetblue and maybe even Alaska they have mid-con connection issues until they can manage to grow their hub and spokes out more. Spirit is ahead of them but they may lose the advantage of odd underserved non-stop routes like MCI-DTW as they focus on hubs. Anyway I enjoy your insight on the blog and also on the podcast. Keep up the great work that you do.