Spirit is an airline looking for a network identity. It used to be that Spirit was the ultra low cost carrier (ULCC) with frequent service in large markets. It was the ultimate spill carrier. But times have changed, and Spirit has been looking for a new way to get an edge. It is now looking to a very unlikely partner… Essential Air Service (EAS)-provider Contour.
We have seen Spirit’s markets squeezed, not only via competition from other ULCCs like Frontier but also from the big network carriers. On top of that, domestic leisure travel weakness has been a problem, hitting off-peak days hard and making it tougher for Spirit to find good outlets for its very expensive fleet.
Now, with a new CEO coming from Sun Country, it has turned to a modified trick of that airline. It is looking toward those tiny EAS markets.
For Sun Country, this was not a big experiment. The airline won the EAS contract to serve Eau Claire in Wisconsin a few years back. It started with 4x weekly to Minneapolis/St Paul along with 2x weekly to Fort Myers. Over time, the frequencies shifted a bit and seasonality meant Fort Myers was replaced by Orlando and Las Vegas at different times, but it kept going until December 2024 when it lost the contract to SkyWest which offered 2x daily on peak days to Chicago, providing better frequency and connectivity.
What was most interesting about this, however, is that the Fort Myers flight actually continued through the winter, just wrapping up its seasonal run in April. I’m not sure if it will come back next year, but it seems like Sun Country may have found a little gold in that clear water up there.
The problem, of course, is that the traditional higher-frequency EAS model isn’t a great fit for a ULCC with big airplanes. So, Spirit has decided that a partnership might be the way to go to tap into this opportunity.
Contour is a Part 135/380 regional operator that is partially owned by Skywest. It has been growing its fleet of 30-seat regional jets, and it now serves a surprising number of cities. It looks like Spirit wants to build on Contour’s presence and start some leisure flying of its own.
Here is the Contour’s eastern network. (The western network exists and could also connect to leisure destinations, but it’s more likely this will start in the east.) I’ve also included some possible routes that Spirit might want to consider.
Contour in red, Spirit possibilities in yellow. Map generated by the Great Circle Mapper – copyright © Karl L. Swartz.
The agreement between the two is described as a “strategic partnership.” Contour will provide ground handling at the small cities for Spirit, and it will put forth a marketing effort to help Spirit gain traction on service to “major leisure destinations.”
I can’t imagine that Contour will be giving any of its EAS bounty to Spirit, but it can still offer those ground handling and marketing services at a very low marginal cost. Spirit will benefit.
Most of these are cities with very limited service today connecting to legacy hubs. Sure, travelers can always connect through those hubs to get to big leisure spots like Spirit’s home base in Fort Lauderdale. But a nonstop flight with a low fare? That’s what made Allegiant such a winner in the first place.
These are even smaller markets than the ones Allegiant serves, however, so it is far from a sure thing that this will work. We won’t even know which markets get served until sometime this summer, and then we’ll see how it turns out. One thing I will bet is that we see these flights operate on off-peak days.
As we know, off-peak demand is way down. But if you live in one of these small towns, would you not shift your travel to go on a Tuesday or Saturday if you could have a much easier and cheaper trip? I have to think that’s the play here. After all, Spirit doesn’t have nearly as much trouble filling planes on peak days. But if it can find a way to utilize those planes on off-peak? That’s a pretty low marginal cost if the alternative is to sit the airplane.
This would be huge news for these small towns that dot the country, but this is unlikely to really do much for Spirit. This is an airline just reaching out in every direction to find flying that might help the airline’s financial situation.
8 comments on “Spirit Partners with Contour to Find New Markets”
Slightly off-topic, and I hate to be that guy, but…
I’m surprised to see MBL qualify for EAS, and while I sympathize with those who live in the area and travel to the area. I’m not sure that the $6.8 million subsidy for MBL each year is the best use of taxpayer money (source: https://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/2024-09/Subsidized%20EAS%20report%20for%2048%20states_HI_PR_Oct2024.pdf ).
Don’t get me wrong, I try to travel to Northern Michigan annually, and it is usually an expensive pain to get to if you’re flying in from out of state, as many rural lake/mountain/seasonal tourism areas tend to be. However, MBL is less than a 75 minute drive from TVC (Traverse City, one of the most populated areas in Northern Michigan, and the 3rd busiest commercial airport in the state, after DTW & GRR). MBL is also only a little over 2 hours’ drive from GRR (Grand Rapids), the 2nd busiest airport in the state. Compared to most of other airports in Michigan with EAS service (with the exception of Muskegon), especially those in the UP, MBL just isn’t that far from alternative, non-EAS options.
EAS eligibility only looks at distance to the nearest medium hub airport or larger. For MBL this means DTW. GRR is a small hub and TVC is a non-hub.
If DOT would consider distance to nearest commercial service airport, many current EAS airports would not qualify. For example, ESC and IMT are both very close to MQT and could improve MQT’s viability if they weren’t individually subsidized. However, this is not how the program currently works.
Thanks for the explanation. I may not agree with the government’s logic on EAS eligibility, but it does make sense in its own way, I suppose.
This seems like it would depend on there being demand from these places to go specifically to Fort Lauderdale, or at least location-agnostic demand to go to a warm beach somewhere. I’m skeptical that there enough latent demand to fill planes. Maybe I’m underestimating Fort Lauderdale’s pull as a leisure destination, though.
The bull case is that the current Contour service is very expensive for connecting itineraries. For example, to fly from SHD, you’ll have to pay $64 each way to Contour to get to CLT, and then also pay whatever fare AA charges for your flights from CLT. Round-trip fares to MIA are consistently $450/person. This is plausibly high enough to price out most leisure demand.
The bear case is that Allegiant has presumably done thorough analysis on every single one of these routes, and is already flying the ones that they think have sufficient demand. Out of the stations in the map above, Allegiant already has nonstops to Florida from CKB and PBG.
Maybe Spirit gets 1 or 2 viable new routes out of this, but I don’t see it as a big deal. They have been flying sub-daily routes out of tiny airports like LBE forever. Sharing the cost of ground handling with another airline is nice but not essential.
Yeah, unless Spirit thinks they’re going to get anyone wanting to connect to Latin America at FLL out of this it seems to be throwing their metaphorical nets into water Allegiant has already explored. But the Contour deal at least lets them do it on the cheap.
To lovingly steal from Richard Hammond’s bit about the Porsche 911: it’s like they want to build something like Allegiant. But we already have an airline like Allegiant. It’s called “Allegiant”.
New President of Contour Ben Munson (and co-founder of Landline) used to work for Spirit VP Network Planning John Kirby at AirTran once upon a time.
I think building on what AirTran did with some secondary/tertiary markets to Florida with day-of-week flying and combining that with the regular hub flying for daily travel has some merits. It also greatly reduces station costs for Spirit.
This is a great way for Contour to help airports that aren’t quite at 10k enplanements a year cross that goal post, which then qualifies the airport for $1 million/year in FAA safety grants and whatnot. I recall that Casino Express, back in the 90s, used to run junkets to Reno / Vegas / Laughlin from a lot of these airports in junky 737-200s – but they’d be full. I can see Spirit coming in and offering 10 – 16 week programs to places like Vegas, Florida, etc and make some money without sticking to the markets year round.
Pure speculation. I would wonder if there is a plan tied to the supposed united-JetBlue tie up. I can see spirit de hub fll to just a spoke to several smaller markets, sell the fll assets to JetBlue which in turn makes fll to a bigger Florida hub as JetBlue signs a deal with united which really wants a south Florida network. Fll isn’t a money maker for an airline for spirit with heavy competition while burning through lots of money.