There is no market more interesting than Fort Lauderdale right now — or will be depending upon what happens with Spirit — and JetBlue is doing what it can to seize the moment. With Spirit hanging on for dear life, it’s a chess match as airlines look to figure out what they might be able to do there in the future.
To really understand what’s going on, we have to take a look at the situation today (and as planned in the future). So, here is FLL in all its current and future glory.
There are currently four terminals with seven concourses that run from the top right to the bottom left in the map above. Terminal 5 with five new gates is being built at the bottom middle of the image for JetBlue.
In Terminal 1, Southwest was building its empire in both the A and B gates. It has now shrunk back as it relocated its Caribbean hub to Orlando, and it now uses seven gates in the central B concourse. (Yes, it uses A1, but that should really be a B gate based on location.)
The old A gates are now occupied by cats and dogs. There’s Alaska and its one daily flight along with Avianca, Caribbean, and Copa all bumming around. And then there’s Frontier which looks like it uses one gate full-time and then uses other A gates as needed. In other words, it’s not relevant. Since this is South Florida, there are probably a few DC-3s and MD-80s on airlines you’ve never heard of that may or may not occasionally use this terminal too. I’m kidding. Sort of.
The C concourse has United using somewhere between four and five gates these days, and then there’s Allegiant with a mere two gates and a couple of common-use gates that it looks like United and Allegiant both may use at various times. Allegiant seems like it should be bigger there, but it is not. Perhaps it seems bigger because when JetBlue was going to buy Spirit, it was going to give its five new gates in Terminal 5 to Allegiant as a concession to the feds.
Terminal 2 and its D gates are primarily the domain of Delta. It has seven gates there, though Air Canada has two gates and WestJet uses Delta space.
Terminal 3 at the west end has American with four gates alongside cats and dogs Avelo, Flair, Porter, and Sun Country at the end of the E concourse. But the main tenant is JetBlue which uses 11 gates in the terminal. JetBlue also has dibs on four gates in the Terminal 4 G gates, and it was named as the primary tenant in the five new gates in Terminal 5 which should open next year.
The last four gates in Terminal 3 are Spirit’s, alongside eight that it uses in Terminal 4’s G gates. The last couple gates in G are for the cats and dogs like Azul and El Al.
Why don’t Spirit and JetBlue just swap the G and F gates so they are all in one place? I assume it’s because customs is in Terminal 4 but not in Terminal 3. Good times.
There is some gate space available now that Southwest has backed off, but it’s tight. But if Spirit were to go away, the question is… who would move in and take over that space?
I had wondered if United would be interested, but as I understand it, United would want a whole lot more gates than it could get its hands on. It doesn’t seem willing to lose money while it tries to build a hub, or at least that’s what it says. This could, of course, be a head fake.
Allegiant and Frontier might be interested as well, but nobody is showing as much love for FLL these days as JetBlue.
JetBlue’s Moves
Even if Spirit continues to fly, JetBlue will have those five new gates coming on. It recently added nine new destinations and increased capacity on nine more. Here’s that rundown:
NEW
- Aruba – 3x weekly
- Cali (Colombia) – frequency unknown
- Cartagena (Colombia) – 4x weekly
- Grand Cayman – 3x weekly
- Liberia (Costa Rica) – 1x daily
- New Orleans – 2x daily
- Pittsburgh – 1x daily
- St Maarten – 4x weekly
- San Pedro Sula (Honduras) – 4x weekly
INCREASE
- Atlanta – add 2x daily
- Boston – add 1x daily
- Cancún – add 5x weekly
- Hartford – add 3x weekly
- Kingston – add 3x weekly
- Punta Cana – add 3x weekly
- San Jose (Costa Rica) – add 1x daily
- San Juan – add 1x daily
- Santiago (DR) – will now fly 1x daily year-round
This is all on top fo the last announcement from July when it added Atlanta, Austin, Norfolk, and Tampa in the first place. It also added an extra daily then to Las Vegas, LA, Phoenix, Raleigh/Durham, and Richmond.
In other words, JetBlue is trying to become the dominant player in Fort Lauderdale, and it’s making some real progress in positioning itself if Spirit were to go under. Not all competitors have schedules filed for March and beyond, but in Jan/Feb of 2026, JetBlue is north of 23 percent of departing seats. In Jan/Feb 2025, it was closer to 18 percent.
I’ll bring in this chart from a recent Cranky Network Weekly to show what JetBlue has done at a higher level.
Before the pandemic, JetBlue served a lot of destinations with a decent number of seats. It was a big Embraer 190 hub for the airline. With the pandemic, JetBlue pulled back. It also upgauged so seats didn’t fall nearly as much. In fact, seats per departure went from about 140 to 160. But now, the growth begins. The airline now has fewer destinations than it had before the pandemic, but it has a lot more seats. It is looking to have the frequency to become more of a carrier of choice in the area.
This is an investment. If Spirit survives, perhaps this ends up not working out. But if Spirit goes, then JetBlue will be well-positioned to keep growing even more.
