Spirit Airlines began service at DFW about 1 year ago and really began to amp up its service at DFW just after American Airlines entered into bankruptcy.  They’ve announced the addition of 5 new cities from DFW including Baltimore and Houston in September and Oakland and Los Angeles next April.  They’ve also filed paperwork to serve Cancun from DFW.

This would bring Spirit’s service at DFW to 25 daily flights to 20 destinations in just over a year.  Not bad.

Proof that the DFW market is *not* a low fare market.  Spirit is seeing load factors close to 90%.  JetBlue and Virgin America have discovered opportunity here as well.  Delta has started flying into DFW right on top of American Airlines turf.

This isn’t just an incursion against American Airlines.  It’s an incursion on Southwest Airlines turf as well.  Both of these airlines have been fat, happy and sassy with their respective domains here in the DFW area.  Each has enjoyed a kind of monopoly on their services in and out of the DFW metroplex area.

As a resident of the area, I’m glad to see the competition and particularly glad to see Spirit’s competition.  The truth is that it is unlikely that I personally will ever fly Spirit.  I’m 6’2″ tall and a big man.  Spirit’s 29″ seat pitch isn’t exactly my idea of even a leisure flight at a low price.

I expect we will see even more competition in the area and particularly so at DFW.  DFW airport isn’t an expensive airport to fly into and with AA’s bankruptcy, I expect we’ll see some terminal consolidation over the next year freeing up more gate space for more airlines.

Competition is good.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax