Spirit Motors up to Detroit
In a move that will surely be welcomed by Delta and not see that airline retaliate with lowering any prices or increasing any frequency to attempt to blow Spirit out of the water, Spirit is adding 15 routes to its operation in Detroit, some new, some returning.
What’s new? Thanks for asking. Birmingham (Alabama, not England, if you were confused), Hartford, Louisville, Milwaukee, Norfolk, Punta Cana, Richmond, Salt Lake City, and St Louis. What’s returning? Austin, Charleston (SC), Kansas City, Phoenix, San Diego, and San Juan.
These additions give Spirit 40 routes from Detroit. Most of the new flights begin June 12 or 13, with Charleston, Kansas City, and Norfolk beginning May 8-9. Hartford and Phoenix will be the only two of the group that will operate daily — BHM, CHS, MCI, MKE, SDF will go 2x weekly, PUJ, RIC, and SLC will operate 3x weekly, and AUS, ORF, SAN, SJU, and STL flies four times per week.
U.S. – Canada Transborder Traffic Craters… or Not
It can’t be a surprise with the current political climate that travel between the U.S. and Canada has dropped, but data released by OAG show a deeper drop than some expected. It’s just not clear how accurate this data is.
OAG says the amount of travel booked at this point in the year for the next six months — compared to this time last year is down about 75%. In March 2024, just over 1.2 million tickets had been booked for travel between the two countries for April travel — as March 2025 comes to an end, only 296,000 tickets have been booked for next month — a 75% drop. Some, however, are refuting this data saying it is wildly inaccurate. We expect this to be settled via a pickup hockey game on a frozen lake in Saskatoon in the next week.
From a capacity standpoint, more than 320,000 seats have been removed from the transborder market since March 3, with some carriers already reducing scheduled capacity by as much as 3.5% in July and August. The reduction is also expected to hit maple syrup and poutine exports, causing an increase in pricing for U.S. customers of the two Canadian delicacies, while the Toronto Blue Jays thrashing on Opening Day yesterday is being reported as yet another consequence.
American Flies South for Winter
Most of the U.S. is beginning to thaw out from winter, but American is already turning its focus to next winter, announcing new, Saturday-only service to Cancún from Oklahoma City and to Punta Cana from four domestic destinations: Indianapolis, Nashville, Pittsburgh, and Raleigh-Durham. The OKC to Cancun flight will be the first scheduled international services for the now more-properly name Will Rogers International Airport.
These additions are accompanied by expanded service to Hawaiʻi from its hubs in both Chicago and Dallas. Chicago/ORD will have daily Dreamliner service to Honolulu beginning October 26, while Dallas/Fort Worth will add daily Dreamliner flights to Kona on November 20, and a second daily flight to Kahului beginning the same day.
AA is also adding three other domestic routes: Charlotte to Aspen, Los Angeles to Des Moines, and Phoenix to Little Rock, the last two of which feel very Allegiant-y.
Ryanair Offers Subscription
Dick’s Last Resort is a chain of restaurants where its whole schtick is that you go and the wait staff is purposely rude. They yell at you, make fun of your order, and generally make the experience as unpleasant as possible — and some people just love it. and if Ryanair is looking for a target market for its new €79 annual subscription, it should consider camping outside a Dick’s Last Resort location.
So what does your €79 get you? Free reserved seats, free travel insurance, and access to once-monthly member-exclusive sales. There’s a pretty simple calculus here — if one flies Ryanair multiple times a year and generally buys a seat assignment — and spends more than €79 per year on seat assignments, then this could make some sense. But otherwise, you’re paying for free insurance, which surely is riddled with conditions and payment caps, and access to sales on Ryanair’s already cheap fares.
The carrier says the service is limited to the first 250,000 people who sign up, which is kinda like saying the company that makes the stuff you drink before a colonoscopy will only be offered at the first 250,000 bars and restaurants that sign up to offer it. But hey, if you’re a glutton for punishment and often fly between far-flung European airports this could be the deal for you.
Southwest, San Antonio at Odds
Southwest Airlines upped the ante in its fight with the City of San Antonio and its airport, filing suit against both the city and its Director of Airports, Jesus Saenz.
The backstory is this: SAT is opening a shiny, fancy new terminal in three years, and Southwest — the largest carrier at the airport — wants in. Or at the very least, it wants to know why it was shut out of the terminal without any discussion or advanced notice. The carrier says the city rigged the process to keep it at the outdated Terminal A while putting everyone else in the new Terminal C.
Southwest claims the the city is charging it more to stay in the outdated terminal, effectively subsidizing its competitors’ move to Terminal C. The airline formally has asked the FAA to investigate whether the city broke federal laws during its decision-making process. It wants it to force the city to return what it calls “excessive payments in extra fees,” SAT offered to pay it back in LUV vouchers that now expire in a year, but Southwest declined.
The city — shockingly — wants the suit dismissed. Southwest did not sign its 10-year lease last fall, leaving it operating at the airport on a month-to-month basis. Stay tuned.
- Air Canada opened a new Air Canada Café in Montréal, or as its known in French, Air Canada Café.
- Delta‘s new, revamped Flight Museum opens next week. The museum is located just off the airport grounds in Atlanta and admission is around $7 per adult, plus a $5.60 September 11 security fee, $4.50 Facility Charge, and a $5.20 admission tax with a suggested gratuity of 200,000 SkyMiles upon exit.
- Finnair canceled around 70 flights Thursday due to a one-day strike.
- flybig secured a big investor.
- Frontier is adding three new frontiers from San Diego.
- Gol is $1.25 billion closer to scoring its way out of bankruptcy.
- Hawaiian will begin its Seattle to Seoul/ICN route on September 12, operating 5x weekly.
- Iberia is going to Disney World.
- LOT made a lot of money last year.
- Porter is partnering with Pascan — a Québec-based regional carrier that flies to totally real places that people actually live and work in throughout eastern and Atlantic Canada.
- Qantas continues to wait for Real ID to be implemented before it agrees to begin its Project Sunrise flights.
- SkyTeam‘s SkyPriority is SkyYou.
- Southwest has American on notice at DFW after it fabricated a brake issue to force an “emergency landing” at Dallas/Fort Worth. Now that it’s landed a plane there, it’s decided it’ll stick around and operate a few dozen flights, as CEO Bob Jordan said “once we started charging for bags, we figured nothing was sacred anymore…DFW here we come.”
- United broke ground on a new maintenance facility in Houston this week. The carrier expects the $177 million facility to open by 2027 — and says the facility boats 91,000-square feet, a desktop simulator and is located “hundreds of miles from Newark.”
- WestJet launched Starlink connectivity.
During what month do people sleep the least?
February. It’s the shortest month.
10 comments on “Cranky Weekly Review Presented by OAK Airport: Spirit Revs up Detroit, Canada Concerns”
Before Southwest starts crying over being stuck in Terminal A at SAT they should be grateful that LAX didn’t kick them over to the midfield terminal like they did to Hawaiian.
I fly a lot with Ryanair – about 30 to 35 flights per year. I am still not buying their Prime product – there are far far too many caveats and I just don’t trust Ryanair on this !
Detroit to Louisville, Milwaukee, Hartford and Birmingham– Spirit is saved!!!
Seriously, this airline has no reason to exist if these are the best routes it can come up with. These are not big leisure or VFR markets but DL can make them work by flying smaller gauge aircraft and connecting itineraries. Things Spirit cannot do in this doomed experiment.
Actually LOLed at the admission fees for the DL flight museum.
Not sure why United needs 91,000 boats in Houston.
SkyTeam‘s SkyPriority is SkrewYou would have been funnier!
As always, job well done!
While the whole “Canada-to-US down 70%!” may be overstating the situation, there’s definitely a real drop in Canadians booking summer travel to the US. If they’re substituting domestic or other destinations, it could have little or almost no effect on the Canadian airlines in the short run.
But the uncertainly around how long Canada>US bookings will be down has to be leading to large antacid deliveries to the Canadian airlines, particularly Porter as new E195-E2s keep entering the fleet. I wasn’t able to find a delivery schedule for them, but if they have deliveries er has to be considering whether or not to try to rush new destinations beyond the US for winter 2025-26 (without cannibalizing their partners at Air Transat) and maybe reconsider Miami? (They serve MIA seasonally and FLL year-round.) Porter doesn’t have downgauge options to the US beyond the Northeast – IIRC they tried Myrtle Beach from Toronto with a Dash-8 and it didn’t go over well.
And there is no way in Hell, Norway I could spend 22 hours on plane without at least being in Business Class (and preferably First) and with heavy sedatives. PER-LHR via a mental hospital…I think not.
Wow, I didn’t edit that well when I changed something.
“deliveries er has to be considering…” should be “if they have deliveries in the rest of 2025 that can’t be placed domestically, they have to be considering…”
(Apparently my fingers are on a sympathy strike with my mouth, having dental implant problems.)
Regarding the downturn in Canadian/US trans-border traffic, are the critics refuting or rebutting the OAG data? There’s a difference. If one refutes an assertion, one proves that the assertion is inaccurate. If one rebuts an assertion, one challenges the assertion and offers a counter narrative.
Ghost – Refuting. Airlines are refuting. There is definitely a decline but it’s not this steep.
I have a photo from Feb 2018 of an arrival board at DAL showing a Southwest flight arriving from DFW. Was the result of weather in the Dallas area but still fun to see.
Not sure on charging extra for Terminal A, but SAT A is fine, so I’m not sure why Southwest cares so much about leaving that terminal when they basically own it at this point.
Also, I’m sure Spirit would love to step in (as they’re already somewhat doing) if WN draws down SAT. At this point NK’s hard and soft products are competitive, so if WN decides to not compete on schedule and price, it’s their problem.
WN’s weakness is probably why NK and F9 are respectively adding DTW and SAN from AUS later this year. WN can’t compete with DL on the former, and will be weaker competition to AS on the latter.