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.
