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Spirit All But Abandons the West

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Spirit was born in Detroit, but it earned its ultra low-cost carrier wings in Florida. The West wasn’t a part of the Spirit story in a meaningful way until fairly recently, and as I mentioned yesterday, it is quickly fading away from Spirit’s network. In Spirit’s first sweeping network change since it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month (again), it has announced it will abandon all but six airports west of the Rockies. And only two of those — LAX and Las Vegas — will continue to be served in a meaningful way.

This is the story of how Spirit tried to win the West before finally conceding that it had been lost.

If you look at the Rockies and to the west, Spirit historically was barely in the market. It took a brief and small shot at San Francisco (SFO) in 2006/2007, but as recently as 2010, the only airports Spirit served in that part of the country were Las Vegas and Los Angeles (LAX).

Spirit Departures From Airports in the Rockies and West

Data via Cirium

It was 2011 when the airline made a real move. Oakland, Portland (OR), and San Diego all came online that year. In 2012, it was Denver and Phoenix/Mesa, the latter which only lasted into 2013. Phoenix/Sky Harbor followed into 2013, Seattle in 2016, and then Burbank and Sacramento in 2019.

Then the pandemic hit, and Spirit went searching for more opportunity. Orange County entered the chat in 2021 when slots came available as traffic sagged, but in 2022 the airline turned on the gas with Albuquerque, Boise, Reno, and Salt Lake City. In 2023, San Jose became the last airport in the West that Spirit would add before it started to dismantle that network.

Things started to fall apart quickly for Spirit as other airlines recovered post-pandemic. The West was an easy place to try to fix, since its flying was largely self-contained outside of Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. Denver was the first airport to disappear in 2024, but it took two bankruptcies before Spirit decided to get serious about moving on. It will now end service to Albuquerque, Boise, Oakland, Portland (OR), Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Diego, and San Jose in October. Seattle was cut this summer already.

Once that’s cleaned up, the West will be a pretty spartan looking place. And as is the case with JetBlue, Spirit will treat it as a destination for those in the rest of the network.

Spirit December 2025 Departures From the Rockies and West

Map via Cirium

What is left? There are only four routes that remain that fly wholly within the region: service from Las Vegas to Burbank, LAX, Orange County, and Reno. For Burbank and Reno, Las Vegas is the only route that remains. Orange County also clings to a Detroit route. Phoenix doesn’t serve Las Vegas at all, but it is still planned to be served from Detroit. We’ll see how long those last. Presumably they did well enough and fit into the airline’s new operational plan.

If we ignore those small blips, it’s really just LAX and Las Vegas that have any sort of substantial operation, and those are now largely east-west focused.

Here’s a look at Spirit’s overall network for December 2025. This shows some pretty distinct regional trends.

Spirit Network December 2025

Map via Cirium

It’s like looking at two airlines. There’s the north-south network that largely hinges around Florida (and some Caribbean). Flights from the Northeast, Detroit, Chicago, and Texas all head to the sun, though there is some non-sun flying sprinkled in there as well. Then there’s the east-west network which is what I talked about before. Draw a line from Dallas to Chicago and there’s a chance that any city east of those will have a flight to Las Vegas or LAX.

Where’s the third network? It’s gone. That was the intrawest network, what’s now four lousy routes from Las Vegas.

Spirit had tried many different tactics in the West over time, and they clearly didn’t work out. So now, the airline is walking away and focusing elsewhere. Presumably it will be happy to reject aircraft leases since it absolutely has more airplanes than it needs. That’s the easy thing to do.

The hard part is finding places in the other two networks to place airplanes where it can actually make money.

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Brett Avatar
Brett

33 responses to “Spirit All But Abandons the West”

  1. GM Avatar
    GM

    Any idea where Spirit ends up when T5 at LAX gets demolished later this year. Are they headed to Bradley West, or can they squeeze in with Jet Blue in T1

    Reply
    1. Brian R Avatar
      Brian R

      Check in at T2, ride the bus from T1 to the new MSC south gates

      Reply
    2. Jason Avatar
      Jason

      They’re already slated to go to T1.5 and bus people to the Midfield gates.
      JetBlue moving T1.5 check in with gates 14,16 18A & 18B. WN will be using the Midfield terminal for Terminating flights and occasional IROPS.

      Reply
      1. enplaned Avatar
        enplaned

        LAX bound and determined to do everything it can to destroy the value proposition of flying.

        Ooo, I know, we can bus people! What else can we do that will further add to the door-to-door journey time of anyone using LAX?

        The redevelopment project is inane, doing nothing to address the underlying issues, but instead, apply massively-expensive bandaids. JFK has done the same thing. We suck so bad at infrastructure in this country, whereas 100 years ago we led the world.

        I gotta give ORD credit for having had the courage to do that airfield reconfiguration, that was an example of how you blow away a fundamental bottleneck.

        Reply
  2. Matt D Avatar
    Matt D

    Historically, most airlines just can’t seem to make it in the West.

    Going way back. Republic threw in the towel after acquiring Hughes AirWest. Ditto with USAir and PSA.

    American tried-and failed-twice. First with AirCal and then again with Reno Air.

    More recently, JetBlue tried and couldn’t seem to find a footing. Avelo gave up.

    About the only ones that have ever figured out a formula that works is Delta after buying Western (even though they twice-dismantled and tried to rebuild the LAX hub) and Southwest.

    I guess you could also call Alaska a success as well.

    Everyone else who has tried over the years has failed. And now add Spirit to that list.

    So that all begs the question of: why? Why is it so difficult to make the West and West Coast work?

    Too bad we can’t post pictures here. I have a lot of vintage stuff you’d probably like. Contemporary as well. Including some original Spirit DC-9’s.

    Reply
    1. PS Avatar
      PS

      Are you leaving out United for a reason?

      Reply
      1. Bill from DC Avatar
        Bill from DC

        Agreed, United’s intra West network has been strong since I can remember (mid 90s). I was always annoyed when I had to fly WN because there wasn’t a UA flight available, like SAN-SJC, which didn’t happen too often.

        Reply
        1. Brad Avatar
          Brad

          I fly from DEN and have traveled extensively since the early 80’s (again, I’m old) and the UA network has never failed to get me anywhere I’ve wanted to go, always nonstop west of the Mississippi. Flying out of the hub has always made it easy, I could get where I wanted to go with reasonable schedules and fares.

          The Smisek days were dark days, at one point DEN had ~400 UA flights a day but I was told then that just less than 100 were mainline and the bulk were on RJ service. That really helped WN grow when they arrived in Denver almost 20 years ago. It was a grand day when Kirby started to reverse that trend with the upgauging and UANEXT program.

          My work travel patterns (not a weekly flier, but typically once or twice a month) are 90% west of the Mississippi, in the early days the other 10% almost always required a bounce off ORD, but with the ERJs flying all kinds of places beyond ORD, I have not had to visit there since before COVID. But, next week I get to go to a new destination that requires either an ORD or IAD bank shot. ORD won for shorter flights and ERJs to the destination over the longer haul to IAD followed by a miserable 50 seater on the leg in and out of the small city.

          Reply
      2. Matt D Avatar
        Matt D

        I suppose I could include them as well. They have always had a strong presence. Even though “Shuttle” could be added to the list of failures and LAX has been pruned quite a bit as well.

        Reply
        1. PS Avatar
          PS

          I would say that DEN, SFO, and LAX gives United a more compelling Western network than DL’s LAX, SEA, SLC combo. Really, four carriers (Alaska, Delta, Southwest, United) have compelling Western options and then American is just kinda bad.

          Reply
        2. Brad Avatar
          Brad

          If you’re going to use Shuttle as a failure then you simply must put TED on the list.

          Good times, back then.

          Reply
    2. Jack Avatar
      Jack

      I had the same thought. Besides population distribution what are the key drivers that make the west tricky(Also F9 has a big intra-west network).

      Reply
    3. Mr Eric Avatar
      Mr Eric

      Is the east any different? AirTran, People Express, TWA, Eastern, MidWest Express, Air Florida, PanAm/National.

      There is a limited profitable marketplace, and only so many routes and frequencies can exist.

      Reply
      1. Matt D Avatar
        Matt D

        AirTran: Was fairly successful but was bought out.

        PEOPLExpress: Got too big too quickly. Took on too much debt and didn’t understand dynamic pricing. Mismanaged straight into the ground.

        TWA: Come on. We know that Carl gnawed on them for years until they were little more than a carcass that couldn’t walk on their own two feet.

        Eastern: Very similar story to TWA.

        Midwest Express: Good airline and very conservative. They were really transcon focused. Demand for their upscale product dried up.

        Air Florida: Was doing okay and was even one of the launch customers for the 757. That all went out the window following that unscheduled bridge stop near DCA.

        Pan Am/National: Was a disaster from the start. Pan Am had no domestic presence prior to the National takeover. They were already in pretty bad shape at the start of the 1980’s. In many ways, National was a forerunner to JetBlue, had a very similar network that basically served three corners of the country: New York, Florida, and California. It was a bad match for Pan Am, who didn’t really know what to do with them.

        Except for AirTran, the one thing all had in common was really, really bad strategy and management. And not necessarily with the airlines or the areas they served.

        Reply
    4. enplaned Avatar
      enplaned

      Didn’t Frontier try some California flying back in the pre-bankruptcy days?

      California has been a historic hotbed of low-cost airlines. Pre-deregulation, you have PSA and Air California as intrastate carriers (not subject to Federal economic regulation) making the big routes within California extremely rough territory.

      In 1975, PSA had 65% market share on LA Basin to SF Bay. Air California picked up another 17%. So that left 18% for United, Western etc. PSA just absolutely pantsed the big carriers.

      Post deregulation, in 1986 American bids for AirCal, US Air bids for PSA, consummated a year or so later. At the time, PSA and AirCal still, between them, dominate the LA Basin to SF Bay market, but as soon as they were bought, American and US Air raised the fares to legacy levels. Cue theme from Jaws.

      In January 1991, American and US Air pull the plug on most of the inherited AirCal and PSA networks because Southwest comes in and destroys them, and in the downturn of the first Gulf War, American and US Air are both bleeding profusely. Southwest ripped them to shreds within a few years. And it was a relatively small carrier at the time, albeit one with vastly superior economics and an iron-clad balance sheet.

      So, from then on, California, Arizona, etc becomes dominated by Southwest, and despite its cuddly image with passengers, under Kelleher in the 1990s, Southwest was as ruthless a competitor as there ever was.

      And Southwest stayed dominant up through today in CA. And in the few times that someone challenged them, they’d go to the mattresses. In the 2010s, Alaska tried on some intrastate routes. Maybe San Diego to Sacramento (??) and Southwest went batshit, dropping fares and running them off. It was like an echo of the carrier they had once been under Kelleher.

      Reply
      1. Kitsune4px Avatar
        Kitsune4px

        I’m not sure why Matt sees Alaska as an after thought out West. After SW became dominant in the California market they tried to move North into the PNW in the 90s, but AS was pretty successful in fending them off, my understanding it was the use of Horizon and the Q400 that made it tough for SW; AS could match them on fares and make money, and Q400 was fast enough that the block-to-block between it and a 737 on legs like SEA-GEG and PDX-BOI wasn’t appreciable. I think it’s safe to say the VX merger was also AS playing a strong defense out West, keeping B6 from gaining more of a toehold at SFO. Tough to run a N-S airline out West if you don’t have an appreciable presence in the PNW and I would observe both 90s SW and 2010s DL fought AS to at best a draw.

        Reply
        1. enplaned Avatar
          enplaned

          Alaska is interesting because it’s a rare smaller airline that, well, survived at all, but part of that survival was withstanding Southwest.

          If you look at how big Alaska was coming into deregulation, it was really small.

          If you go to the Wikipedia page on the Civil Aeronautics Board, there’s a table showing the revenue and ASMs and fleet of all the regulated carriers in the last year (1978) of regulation, and Alaska is *tiny*. It’s smaller by revenue than almost any other scheduled jet carrier other than Wien Air Alaska and Aloha. It had a fleet of only 11 aircraft. If you were betting based on that table, you wouldn’t select Alaska as a winner.

          It merged with Jet America in 1986/7, and that was almost a disaster because initially it tied to use Jet America as a kind of trans-continental brand which didn’t work at all. So they folded Jet America into Alaska.

          Other than that, until the Virgin America merger it was all organic growth, was it not?

          Part of the strategy was flying places from the west coast that Southwest didn’t go by virtue of its model. So, Mexico. Southwest dominates California, but didn’t do international for a long, long time. So, OK, Alaska does that – which arguably is them filling a role Southwest should have had. You can see Hawaii in the same way. They go west coast to Hawaii a while ago, which, again, the routes from California were those Southwest should have done, except Southwest didn’t do ETOPS.

          So the fact that Southwest’s original model was focused on simplicity, which meant very much *not* being all things to all people, left gaps that a more conventional airline would have filled and Alaska filled those gaps.

          For that matter, the fact that, for the same reason, Southwest never touched the Seattle to Alaska routes when it entered the PNW was a huge advantage to Alaska Airlines. If Southwest had been prepared to jump on SEA-ANC (which would have required flag authority which I don’t think Southwest had at the time but could easily have gotten), the outcome might have been different.

          So, after all that, I would say a key strength for Alaska in battling Southwest was its ability to be where Southwest was not, at the time, willing to go. Plus, willing to become more and more efficient over time.

          Alaska kind of became a de-facto LCC because of overlap with Southwest.

          Reply
          1. GS Avatar
            GS

            The same is true now with the E175 fleet. Alaska serves SBA, SBP, STS, FAT, etc… with pretty strong frequency. No they cannot match Southwest’s frequency in the SAN-SMFs of the world, but it’s a pretty big collection of markets that Southwest is largely ignoring because they don’t want regional jets

            Reply
      2. Angry Bob Crandall Avatar
        Angry Bob Crandall

        Don’t forget QQ

        Reply
    5. Jason Avatar
      Jason

      Southwest Airlines west coast success happened with many thanks to missed managed USAir,American,Alaska Air and Delta at the time. USAir Killed off PSA,American Killed off AirCal and later Reno Air, AlaskaAir killed off Jet America and Delta Killed off Western Airlines LAX dominance. America West management foolishly focused on 747s and screwed the pooch on becoming a possible leader in California.

      Reply
      1. enplaned Avatar
        enplaned

        Jet America was basically never successful. They were incredibly lucky that Alaska decided to buy them, I think to be a foundation of a non-union subsidiary. But it was an immediate money-loser, so, killed off.

        In the end, Alaska got little more out of the deal than the MD-80s and accompanying crews that were in Jet America’s fleet.

        Reply
  3. Steven Avatar
    Steven

    Looks like the Delta 1980 route map!

    Reply
  4. Bill from DC Avatar
    Bill from DC

    Why on Earth would they leave stations open at BUR and RNO solely to fly insanely competitive flights to LAS? Obviously there are costs associated with having a station, even for a bare bones outfit (soon to become barer) like Spirit, which are hard to recoup with $38 fares to Vegas.

    Reply
    1. Zack Rules Avatar
      Zack Rules

      This makes no sense to me too, not sure why SNA wasn’t dropped as well. Maybe these go away in the next round of cuts.

      These aren’t out west but I wonder when Austin, Hartford, Minneapolis, Rochester, St. Louis and any other city with minimal flights get the ax.

      Reply
      1. Jeremy Avatar
        Jeremy

        SNA has slots with capacity constraints in a wealthy catchment area which makes it slightly higher yielding. I’d imagine they don’t to cede those hard to get slots that most carriers would love.

        Reply
      2. Ian L Avatar
        Ian L

        Re: Austin, Spirit has low fare service to DTW and EWR.to themselves right now, so if they contract everything out and use common-use gate space it’s not an expensive spoke to maintain.

        With that said, Frontier could base planes on either end of those routes and push Spirit out entirely, as the other AUS routes already have significant competition.

        With the above in mind, betting NK leaves AUS by year-end, despite being a signatory on AUS airport’s new terminal expansion as of a day or two pre-bankruptcy.

        Reply
  5. SEAN Avatar
    SEAN

    Alternate title, “How the west was lost.”

    Reply
  6. Sam Avatar
    Sam

    Spirit’s network decisions have always baffled me… its one thing to go into a competitive market against 1 other airline, but it feels like they actively try to find the routes where there’s 2 or 3 major competitors already.

    My home airport (CHS) they entered a few years ago and fly:

    EWR & LGA / NYC Area (competition from UA, AA, DL, B6)
    BWI / DC Area (competition from AA, UA, and WN)
    FLL / Miami Area (competition from B6 & AA)
    BOS (competition from DL & B6)
    DTW (competition from DL)
    LAS (competition from Breeze)

    Just stunning to me that they come in as the 3rd or 4th (or 5th!!!) carrier on most routes – with a worse product / schedule / reliability – and somehow think they’ll gain any meaningful market share.

    Reply
    1. Ben in Idaho Avatar
      Ben in Idaho

      Same with Spirit in Boise. I thought it was odd, not that they came into the market, but that their only flight was to LAS, a market already served by AS, WN, and G4. I guess they thought they could edge out G4, since that isn’t daily, but WN dominates the market and AS had scooped up their loyal customers and those who didn’t want the WN experience (pre-seat assignment). G4 is there to get the rest.

      Unfortunately as Tim Dunn mentions below, it must not have been worth the cost to try destinations to the east that are unserved from BOI. I feel like that’s where they could have had a chance, especially since F9 wasn’t in the market (although they have since returned).

      Reply
  7. Tim Dunn Avatar
    Tim Dunn

    the cost advantage of being an ultra low cost carrier is significantly reduced on longer haul domestic flights.

    NK’s problem is just like B6′ – trying to compete against larger airlines that can match or exceed schedules and offer competitive low fares as part of a larger network and loyalty program

    It is hard to not see the US contracting into about 5 legacy like network carriers including the current big 4 and AS which is trying very much to grow into a nationwide carrier but building on its niche position in the west.

    it is hard to see how low cost and ultra low cost carriers that do not have market dominance in at least one or two major markets can succeed longer term

    Reply
    1. Zack Rules Avatar
      Zack Rules

      Big difference between Spirit and JetBlue is people like flying the latter. A few years ago Spirit had some initial success in St. Louis, adding more flights before they started service, but quickly cut back because I suspect they don’t get a lot of return customers.

      Reply
  8. DesertGhost Avatar
    DesertGhost

    I think this is another case of the same old problem with the airline industry – too many seats chasing too few passengers. The airline industry is mature, and has been so for a number of years. The days of 20% annual growth and constantly hiring new people at the bottom of the pay scale are over.

    Reply
    1. David C Avatar
      David C

      Couldn’t agree more. The terms ‘low fares’ and ‘long term success’ don’t go well together in the airline industry (or most any business as a concept).

      WN takes a lot of nonstop city pair traffic away and so does Alaska. After that, I imagine that United and Delta have to be very careful managing their resources. Without longhaul, I would imagine United and Delta would look differently out west as well.

      Reply

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