As budget carriers taxi into DFW Airport, is American Airlines’ fortress hub showing cracks?

No frills, ultra-low-cost airlines are planning their biggest years ever out of DFW International Airport this summer, hoping to steal price-conscious passengers from American Airlines at the nation’s second-busiest airport.

Spirit Airlines, Frontier and Sun Country combined have planned more than 7,800 flights out of DFW Airport between June and August, even as the rest of the airline industry expects to be well-below pre-pandemic levels nationwide for the rest of 2022. Those flights represent more than 1.4 million available seats.

It’s an aggressive ramp up for a segment of the travel industry that has sometimes ignored DFW Airport and left it to Fort Worth-based American Airlines, which controls about 85% of the traffic there. The region’s other commercial airport, Dallas Love Field, is dominated by Dallas-based Southwest Airlines.

For years, budget carriers have been lampooned as low-cost alternatives with unreliable service and high fees that skimp on basic airline amenities, such as complimentary soft drinks. But as the airline industry pivots to capture leisure travelers, budget carriers are gaining ground, buoyed by deal-seeking travelers and growing fleets ready to take on the air travel establishment.

This summer, the leading U.S. budget carriers will fly 7% more flights out of DFW Airport than they did in the summer of 2019, using bigger planes that will increase the number of seats by 10% over 2019. Then there are a growing number of Latin American budget carriers, such as Mexico’s Volaris and VivaAerobus, which are thriving on that country’s growing desire to travel.

“We are not here to steal market share, we are here to stimulate demand,” said Daniel Shurz, Frontier’s senior vice president of commercial. “We want to get people traveling that didn’t travel before, people that would have driven to get on airplanes instead.”

Last month, Spirit and Frontier announced a $3 billion merger that could transform the budget airline industry, creating the nation’s fifth-largest carrier behind American, Southwest, Delta and United and passing Alaska and JetBlue by many measures, including the number of aircraft in their fleets.

It’s too early to tell how that will transform the Dallas-Fort Worth landscape, but both airlines are adding flights regardless of the pending tie-up.

On March 9, Denver-based Frontier announced a new flight from DFW International Airport to Cleveland. That will make 17 routes out of DFW for Frontier, routes the carrier intends to make permanent as it shores up its schedule here. Going back to 2019, Spirit had never averaged more than four flights a day out of DFW. This summer, it has scheduled an average of 11 flights a day.

While Frontier’s schedule does lean on vacation destinations such as Las Vegas and Orlando, it’s also flying more frequently to large U.S. cities such as Philadelphia and Detroit.

In June, when it starts several new routes to North Texas, DFW Airport will be the 11th busiest stop in Frontier’s network.

DFW’s fast-growing population and domestic migration make it a hot market for low-cost carriers since there is a large base of travelers that will fly frequently to other U.S. cities to visit family, Shurz said. When picking the Cleveland route, Shurz pointed out that fares from Dallas on American Airlines averaged $181 last year and $212 the year before.

Prices have increased significantly for summer 2022 travel. Frontier is selling its cheapest tickets in June for nonstop travel to Cleveland from DFW for about $318 round-trip. To compare, American’s cheapest nonstop tickets during that period are about $379, although American customers don’t have to pay $30 to $60 for a piece of carry-on luggage.

When the ultra-low-cost carrier model took shape in the 2000s decade, most thrived on connecting underserved cities to vacation destinations such as Pensacola, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Las Vegas. Airlines can make money on those routes because they can sell non-stop tickets between small cities and vacation destinations more cheaply because they don’t have to connect passengers through hubs, said Colin Scarola, a transportation industry analyst with CFRA. And usually, these carriers would only fly two to three times a week, planning routes on the busiest leisure travel days.

“They seem to be finding a lot of success displacing the hub and spoke model of the three major airlines, with point-to-point service between small cities,” Scarola said. “They are generally not as competitive as when they try to push into the big city routes.”

That’s still the model for Las Vegas-based Allegiant Air, which doesn’t fly into the Dallas-Fort Worth area at all.

Minneapolis-based Sun Country also follows a modified version of that, flying a highly seasonal schedule. Although it does fly into DFW Airport, Sun Country’s schedule drops dramatically in the summer. However, even Sun Country is ramping up this summer with more than four daily flights, mainly to Mexico beach destinations such as Cancun. But Sun Country has leveled out its schedule too, adding more winter flights.

Only a few years ago, Sun Country would completely drop flights to DFW in the fall and winter only to come back in spring and summer.

Spirit’s vice president of network John Kirby said the airline’s biggest barrier at DFW might actually be the number of gates available for flights. Spirit’s schedule this summer will be the biggest of any budget carrier out of DFW and, based on the number of seats, will be the second-largest airline at DFW out of all carriers, surpassing Delta and United.

“It’s difficult to get more capacity,” Kirby said. “There’s not a lot of room left in the airport to grow.”

American, with its immense size at DFW and financial resources, has plowed millions of dollars into financing expansions of new gates, adding 19 new slots for planes to park and passengers to load since the summer of 2019.

Miramar, Fla.-based Spirit also has a crew and maintenance base at DFW, the carrier’s 10th busiest airport. Spirit recently introduced a new flight from nearby Austin-Bergstrom International Airport to Monterrey, Mexico, the first direct flight from Texas’ capital to Monterrey, an important stop for families visiting relatives.

Kirby said the airline may consider adding a flight from DFW to Monterrey as well if the Austin route is successful, although it will already have competition from American Airlines and Viva Aerobus.

Foreign budget carriers, mainly from Mexico, are growing here, too, after the upheaval that reshuffled the global airline landscape. Mexican low-cost carrier Interjet went bankrupt and ceased operations in December 2020 after flying 157 flights here in the summer of 2019. But Interjet’s presence has been replaced by VivaAerobus, another budget carrier with plans to fly almost five flights a day to Mexico City and Monterrey.

Another Mexican low-cost carrier, Volaris, also is flying a bigger schedule to DFW Airport this summer with routes to Guadalajara and Mexico City.

But the growth from budget carriers does worry some in the industry who say they are growing too fast with ambitious fleet expansion contracts. There are also worries that inflation, namely high gas prices, could make flights more expensive and cut into the discretionary spending of this segment’s price-conscious travelers.

“That’s a lot of money taken out of the economy and these carriers thrive on impulse traffic,” said Michael Boyd, an airline consultant with Boyd Group International in Colorado.

Even with the growth, Boyd said budget carriers such as Spirit and Frontier will have trouble competing with American Airlines, particularly because they are both paying increased costs for labor and fuel. Yes, air service to small cities is suffering and opening a path for budget carriers to step in, but carriers still need enough passengers to fill planes to destinations such as Florida without flying through a major airline hub.

American Airlines seems to be moving as if its budget competitors don’t exist. The local behemoth is planning more than 150,000 flights in and out of DFW Airport between June and August, slightly more than it offered in the pre-pandemic summer of 2019.