United Buys Spirit’s Final Two Gates at Chicago/ORD

Weeks after selling/assigning gates to American, Spirit found itself to be an equal opportunity hustler, opting this week to sell/assign its final two gates at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport to United for $30 million. That should buy Spirit a couple more weeks of time as it tries to sort itself out in Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time in a year. Going forward, Spirit will continue to operate at ORD, but it will operate out of common-use gates now as they are the most likely to have leftover change that the airline’s gate agents can scoop up to help with its bankruptcy reorganization.

The gates are G12 and G14, and are expected to transfer to United after a hearing in bankruptcy court to approve the deal on February 24. As part of the sale, Spirit agreed to do a full cleaning and disinfecting of the two gate areas prior to the transfer and United agreed to return any brass knuckles, nunchucks, or other weapons back to Spirit within 45 days of taking over the gates.

For United, this may turn out to be a case of “the best defense is a good offense.” CEO Scott Kirby swore up-and-down that we wouldn’t be in the market for Spirit’s distressed assets at ORD, a stance in conflict of this move. But perhaps it’s not about who got them — United, but it’s about who won’t be getting them now — American. What’s next in Chicago? Who knows, but whatever it is, it’ll be exciting.

Elliott Reduces Stake in Southwest

At just about the same time as the first person took their first assigned seat in Southwest’s history, its savior — or foil, depending on your perspective — Elliott Investment Management reduced its stake in the carrier to about 9%, down from its peak of 16% last fall. This continues a trend of slowly reducing its holdings in the airline bit-by-bit over the last several months.

It’s current holding falls just under the 10% threshold required to call a special shareholders’ meeting, giving it far less say in the operation of the airline. Although that might just be a moral victory for Southwest loyalists as the changes that are now codified in the carrier’s ethos (assigned seating, charging for the first checked bag) were what Elliott wanted.

According to an SEC filing, Elliott’s position in Southwest comes out to a cool $1.3 billion, or roughly enough to cover the first checked bag for the next 8,572,428 passengers. Elliott says it made the transactions for “portfolio management purposes” which we believe is PE speak for “our work is done here, now give us the money.”

Southwest, United to Debut Super Commercials on Sunday

Both Southwest and United will run 30-second spots during the Super Bowl on NBC. Southwest’s ad will stream nationally for both fans watching the game on Peacock, while it will run over the air on NBC’s traditional broadcast in six markets: Austin, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Honolulu, and San Diego. The ad celebrates (that’s Southwest’s word, not ours) its new assigned seating model while playing homage to its former open seating policy.

United will be focused on connectivity in its ad as the carrier touts its Starlink Wi-Fi installation and that it’s already been completed on 300 regional aircraft — just not the one you’re scheduled to fly on next week.United’s ad will also run in select cities, with a focus on destinations where it operates regional jets including Cincinnati, Cleveland, Colorado Springs, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, and Kansas City.

Who knew Denver would turn out to be Ground Zero for Super Bowl Sunday commercials from airlines? When apprised of this development both Frontier and Denver Air Connection declined to comment.

Frontier Eliminates Eight Frontiers

Frontier’s schedule was finally extended through summer this week, and as part of the extension, the carrier will end service to eight destinations. Flights are now bookable on the carrier through September 8, but if you’re wanting to go to one of these eight, you’re SOL:

• Burlington
• Green Bay
• Harrisburg
• Missoula
• Portland (ME)
• Savannah
• St. Thomas
• St. Croix

Savannah, St. Thomas, and St. Croix have Spirit service while the other five do not.

In addition to these eight, Frontier does not currently have plans to operate to Boise, Charleston, Spokane, Syracuse, or Tulsa after May, but is not formally exiting those destinations yet.

United’s Overnight Shutdown Went Unnoticed

We’ve all been there — you shut down your computer and it starts downloading and installing an update you didn’t ask for and it tells you not to shut off your computer during the process. United took that process and put it on steroids Wednesday morning as the carrier shut everything down from 2:30 a.m. to approximately 6 a.m. ET to allow it to run an upgrade on its reservation system.

The carrier took its internal reservation system — SHARES — and transferred its data center from an undisclosed location in North Carolina to Chicago as part of its eventual transition to cloud-based Amazon Web Services. The migration required the carrier to take much of its services offline for a few hours, including customer-facing app and website access plus internal systems for staff only. To prepare, it proactively canceled hundreds of overnight flights to reduce its footprint during the shutdown.

Remaining flights in the air, including international and domestic redeyes continued without incident, and United was able to bring everything back online shortly after 6 a.m. Wednesday. As the system came back online, rumors that staff from other AAirlines were seen trying to keep United offline were unconfirmed, but a 10-gallon hat and a package of Texas Toast was found behind one of the servers as if someone had left in a hurry.

• Air Cambodia is the newest carrier to join the Boeing family.
• Air Moana is adding a third ATR 72-600.
• AirAsia is expected to place an order for 100 A220s.
• American is adding service from New York/JFK to both Calgary and Québec City. Both routes will operate 3x weekly from August through October.
• ANA is investing $17.5 billion in its fleet.
• Avianca is making the rare decision to add value to its economy light fares. It’s also going to resume serving Caracas next week.
• Biman Bangladesh fired CEO Shafiqur Rahman after his arrest for abusing a member of his house staff, who apparently was just 11 years old, which brings a lot of other questions with it.
• Delta is adding summer seasonal service from Boston to Halifax and Austin to Asheville.
• El Al is adding Apple TV to its in-flight entertainment.
• Emirates will begin operating a second daily frequency to Tokyo/NRT beginning May 1.
• KLM CEO Marjan Rintel received a second term of four years.
• LATAM had a profit of $1.5 billion in 2025.
• Porter is adding three new routes to the U.S.: Ottawa to both Phoenix and Miami, plus Vancouver to Phoenix. The YVR-PHX flight marks Porter’s first transborder destination from Vancouver.
• Qantas is divesting its stake in Jetstar Japan.
• Saudia now plans to debut its A321XLR late this year.
• Singapore will begin service Riyadh in June.
• STARLUX‘s first European destination is a very Prague-matic choice.
• SWISS took delivery of a second A350 this week.
• TAROM inked a codeshare agreement with SAS.
• Tigerair Taiwan ordered four A321neos.
• Uganda Airlines is in the market for a new CEO. If interested, please remember to use the code ‘Cranky’ on your application so we get a $100 kickback referral fee.
• Vietnam Airlines will begin 3x weekly service to Amsterdam in June.
• Volaris will begin year-round, 2x weekly service from Querétaro to Denver in June.

My wife asked if, for once, she could have some peace and quiet while cooking dinner. So I took the batteries out of the smoke alarm.