Several airlines are leading a rush to pick up routes and business left behind in the collapse of Spirit Airlines last week.
Breeze Airlines is adding 11 routes to its network including four routes from Atlantic City, New Jersey, where Spirit had operated well over 90% of the airport’s flights; the routes include Orlando, Myrtle Beach, Fort Myers, Florida and Palm Beach.
JetBlue has announced 11 new routes from Fort Lauderdale, which had been Spirit’s home base. Frontier, which repeatedly tried to merge with Spirit, is adding nine routes, and increasing frequencies in former Spirit markets.
Southwest is possibly the airline with the most additions: increases or new service on 26 Las Vegas routes and 23 from Orlando; however ony four are new routes. The others are added flights to existing routes.
What about all our Spirit miles? Who’s gonna give them back to us?
Sadly, no one, it appears. And loyalty members of larger airlines should keep that in mind, too, since in the fine print the airlines give themselves the right to change everything, lower values or cancel programs at any time—even if they are not bankrupt!