Spirit Airlines is establishing a crew base in the Dallas area to support the flights it is adding furiously into and out of DFW airport.  This is in addition to the maintenance base it has just established at DFW.

Clearly Spirit plans to stay and that puts a big thorn in American Airlines’ side, I think.  Leisure travel isn’t the bread and butter of AA but it is what can fill their aircraft for incremental revenue.  Spirit will drain that off some.  In addition, I do expect that Spirit will put downward pressure on prices at American Airlines.

SWA will see a similar drain of those occasional leisure travelers but its brand loyalty and ever increasing business traffic help alleviate that impact considerably.

Bottom line:  Spirit sees long term opportunity in the DFW area and I couldn’t agree more.  The idea that DFW is an expensive airport to operate from is no longer entirely valid and hasn’t been for some time.  In addition, it is no more and no less impacted by traffic and/or weather events.  This makes DFW an attractive airport and other airlines should sit up and pay attention.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax