Busiest Airports in U.S. to Face Capacity Restrictions

The FAA has begun a drawdown of capacity at the nation’s busiest airports today in celebration and recognition of the federal government’s complete and total failure to do its job. The process will begin today with a 4% reduction, and it will increase by 1% until next week when it reaches 10% — or until someone in the federal government changes their mind — whichever comes first. Regional flights are expected to take the brunt of the cancellations to reduce the impact on travelers, but where it goes is anyone’s best guess.

The affected airports include 33 of the 40 busiest airports for commercial travel and 7 others that are busy for other things — such as Teterboro and its private jet traffic and Anchorage which is cargo-focused. This is theoretically being done to relieve pressure on the nation’s air traffic controllers who are understaffed on their best day when they’re paychecks have actual U.S. dollars in them. But as they receive their second zero dollar paycheck this week, pressure continues to mount.

International flights are exempt from the reductions — for now — but most of those international flights are famously fed into by connecting flights from all over the country, so just because your flight from Chicago to Tokyo is operating, it doesn’t mean your regional flight from Harrisburg to Chicago will — and that MDT-NRT nonstop route is still a few years off. So what will happen? Nobody knows. But we do know it’ll likely get worse until it gets better.

For more on the forced capacity reductions or if you just want to get more angry at the President and Congress for failing you, please read Thursday’s post on crankyflier.com.

Spirit Shrinks Staff, Stations

Spirit Airlines continues to attempt to shrink its way out of a financial hole as the carrier will see two senior leaders leave while it also reduces its operation and withdraws from five more cities.

Linde Grindle, the SVP and Chief Human Resources Officer and Rocky Wiggins, SVP and Chief Information Officer are both leaving their roles at Spirit. In addition to these two leadership positions, Spirit also cut about 150 salaried positions from its corporate and operational teams.

In addition to personnel, the airline will retreat from five cities with Milwaukee and Phoenix losing service on January 8, Rochester (NY) and St Louis will go offline on January 13, and seasonal service will not return to Cranky-favorite Bucaramanga, Colombia. These five make it 18 cities Spirit has withdrawn from since its second bankruptcy earlier this year with countless more routes axed. Instead it continues to double-down on Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, and Orlando to the point where it may whip out a napkin and replicate Day One Southwest with a triangle route between those three cities.

Frontier’s Brand Might be Green, but its Q3 was in the Red

Frontier Airlines’s Q3 earnings came out this week and the carrier lost $77 million on $886 million gross revenue. The loss came to $0.34 share, which begs the question why anyone would have stock in Frontier in the first place.

Was there good news? Frontier did announce 42 new routes as it picked at the bones left by Spirit in markets all over the country. It’s Q3 performance was “in line with expectations” according to CEO Barry Biffle, so at least the airline isn’t having delusions of grandeur.

The $77 million loss is a more than $100 million flip from a year ago when it posted a $26 million profit during the year’s third quarter. Frontier did say it expects a small profit in the final three months of the year while capacity will remain mostly flat, but it will likely change its business model 67 times before the end of Q4, so who really knows?

United Gets (Back) into the Debit Card Game

Airlines generally got out of the debit card game following the 2008 financial crisis as new laws and regulations made them far less lucrative, but United is back and potentially could be first to lead a new wave. The new debit card will earn one mile for every $1 spent on the card with United, one point for every $2 spent on everything else, 2,500 bonus miles after spending $10k in one year, and a one-time use “Get out of Newark free” card to swap a connection at no charge.

There’s 10,000 bonus miles on offer — for now — when spending $500 within the first four months of having the card which should be a pretty easy path to 10,000 UA miles for most consumers. The card comes with a $4 monthly fee that United will waive if you keep more than $2k in the debit account, but it will double fee — charging $8 — each time you book a Basic Economy flight.

If you’re someone who doesn’t like your money doing anything but sitting around and gathering dust, United will also offer bonus miles based on how much you keep in the debit account, offering as many as 70,000 annual miles for keeping more than $50k in your account. But let’s be real — there are much, much better places to store $50k than in a debit account just to get some bonus miles. But if you want it, there it is. Just don’t blame us when the deal goes away or gets “enhanced.”

Lyft Pivots to United

After Delta moved on from Lyft to Uber earlier this year, Lyft was left without a dance partner amongst major U.S. airlines. But that didn’t last long as United announced this week that it would team up with the pink-branded rideshare service offering up Mileage Plus miles for those who link their two accounts.

United customers who link their accounts can then earn one mile for every dollar spent on Standard Priority Pickup and XL rides and two miles for every dollar booked on business profiles. Extra Comfort, Lyft Black, Black SUV and regular airport rides will earn three miles per dollar. Pre-scheduled rides to and from the airport will rake in four miles per dollar. Pre-scheduled rides to and from Newark airport will earn 12 miles per dollar as a sort of hazard pay add-on.

The airline is clearly entering into this partnership out of its own benevolence and won’t do anything with the data is gleans from who is scheduling rides to the airport, and when and where those originate. As it ramps up towards its eVTOL air taxi service in Chicago, there’s no way that data could be relevant — but as long as it’s going to collect data on us, we might as well score from miles in the process.

• Aeromexico is back on the NYSE.
• Air Algérie expanded its codeshare with Qatar Airways.
• Air Astana placed an order for 15 Dreamliners.
• Air Baltic posted a €6M profit in Q3.
• Air Canada ended up C$284 million in the black during Q3, which, when converted to USD comes out to a box of Timbits and an iced coffee.
• Air Europa accepted a $349 million offer from Turkish to purchase a minority stake.
• Air France-KLM posted a cool €1.203 billion operating profit for Q3 2025.
• Air India is in the market for a $1.1 billion bailout.
• Akasa Air — the carrier that always has people asking for flights to Seattle, but it can’t figure out why — is considering an IPO.
• Belavia was removed from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctions list. Congrats, Belavia!
• Breeze is flying to Twin Falls, ID beginning March 6.
• British Airways is joining the Starlink Wi-Fi family.
• Canada North is reducing its network and plans to layoff some pilots.
• Comair — the South African one — had its bankruptcy settlement with Boeing approved.
• Emirates posted a $3.3 billion profit for the first half of its fiscal year.
• LOT will fly a lot — 5x per week in fact — to Porto. It also said goodbye to its wet-lease agreement with Hello Jets.
• Qantas‘s updated fiscal guidance is rosy.
• Ryanair is rolling in the cash.
• SmartLynx is out of money, proving that putting “Lynx” in your name may not be the move in this industry.
• Somon Air is bringing 14 Boeing planes to Tajikistan.
• Southwest‘s newest interline partner is Philippine Airlines.
• SpiceJet is peppering wet-leased B737-800 capacity into its fleet.
• Virgin Atlantic is adding a nonstop route from London/Heathrow to Seoul/Incheon in the spring to help Korean’s merger with Asiana.

I just bought my first pair of shoes with memory foam insoles. Now I won’t forget why I walked into the kitchen anymore.