What Does Spirit Airlines’ Closure Mean for Pittsburgh?

PHOTO VIA SHUTTERSTOCK

It’s official: Spirit Airlines — the only commercial airline to fly out of Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe — has ceased operations after two bankruptcies and mounting financial challenges. 

The budget airline met an abrupt end to its 34-year run, announcing the cancellation of all its flights and the shutdown of its customer support effective 3 a.m. on Saturday, May 2. 

“Sustaining the business required hundreds of millions of additional liquidly that Spirit does not have and could not procure,” Spirit CEO Dave Davis says in a statement. “This is tremendously disappointing and not the outcome any of us wanted.”

According to Blue Sky News, the public relations arm of Pittsburgh International Airport and the Allegheny County Airport Authority, Spirit spent nine years at Pittsburgh International Airport, carrying more than 10% of the airport’s passengers and serving nine markets at its peak. 

As of March 2026, Spirit carried 3.5% of PIT’s passengers and served three markets.

“It’s been a slow and painful process to watch the airline struggle,” writes PIT’s CEO, Christina Cassotis, in a post. “Each airline that serves our market is a partner who helps our community and helps others discover our community. An airline ceasing operations is a big deal. The people who worked to build and operate the airline have lost their jobs. Travelers’ plans are disrupted.”

However, airport officials say they had been monitoring Spirit’s financial situation for months while the carrier publicly navigated through the bankruptcy restructuring process. The airline’s closure was not unexpected, and it was something they had been preparing for, just in case.

Additionally, for the past 11 years, PIT has pursued its air service diversification strategy by ensuring that the airport is not dependent on a single carrier, providing stability for the airport and region. In that period, PIT has added seven new carriers, upping its airline total to 16 —15 not including Spirit — and increased its nonstop destinations from 36 to 64.

“Air service diversification has been a deliberate strategy by our team. It provides options and choices for passengers and protects against over-reliance on a single carrier,” says Joe Rotterdam, PIT’s vice president of air service development. “The airport continually partners with all airlines to ensure our air service portfolio is maximized for our market.”

Spirit’s nonstop destinations it served from PIT – Fort Lauderdale, Myrtle Beach and Orlando – already have nonstop service on several other airlines, ensuring robust service in each market, airport officials say.

The following carriers also offer nonstop service, in addition to Spirit:

• Fort Lauderdale (FLL): JetBlue Airways and Southwest Airlines each operate daily, year-round service from Pittsburgh. JetBlue resumed its Pittsburgh-Fort Lauderdale service in November 2025, after a four-year hiatus, as part of its recent growth at PIT.
• Myrtle Beach (MYR): Allegiant Air, Breeze Airways and Southwest offer nonstop service. Breeze recently announced its entry into the market with nonstop, twice weekly service beginning July 3.
• Orlando (MCO): Southwest offers nonstop service to Orlando, which it recently increased from four daily flights to six, as well as Frontier Airlines. Allegiant also serves the market via Orlando-Sanford International Airport (SFB).

Multiple U.S. carriers have announced immediate plans to help Spirit’s passengers and staff through temporary price discounts and expanded flying.

American Airlines has enacted fare caps on all routes where it competed against Spirit while Frontier is offering discounted rescue fares for Spirit customers. Delta Air Lines, Southwest, United and others have also announced special discounted fares only accessible to Spirit customers.

Hours after Spirit’s closure, JetBlue announced a major network expansion, including 11 new routes and increased frequencies on others from Fort Lauderdale, most of which were previously flown by Spirit, along with special $99 discount fares.

“With major operations in Fort Lauderdale and San Juan, we’re in a unique position to help Spirit customers get where they need to go and ensure flights remain affordable despite greater demand,” says JetBlue CEO Joanna Geraghty.

Breeze also announced it will begin new nonstop service to several markets from Atlantic City; an airport whose traffic heavily relied on Spirit.

It’s a different story at Latrobe’s Arnold Palmer Regional Airport. 

Spirit’s departure leaves the small facility without a commercial airline, and officials told PennLive that a workforce reduction may soon be coming. It remains unknown at this time how many employees could be laid off, but PennLive reports that some were seen Sunday, the day after the airline closed, leaving with their belongings. 

The news also couldn’t have come at a worse time for the airport, which is completing a $22 million terminal expansion set to open in July.

Officials say they believe a new airline will move into the airport before too long, but the golden question is when, exactly, that could happen.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, Spirit has faced a litany of challenges to its business that have led the carrier to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy twice, first in November 2024 and again in August 2025. From changing consumer preferences, rising labor costs and increased competition to the recent rise in fuel costs following conflicts in the Middle East, the carrier has long been seeing its thin profit margin grow even thinner.

“Thank you to everyone at Spirit Airlines,” Cassotis writes. “We had a good run together. And you made a difference here.”