Arnold Palmer Regional director says other carriers won't compete against Spirit at Unity airport

Arnold Palmer Regional Airport officials have yet to find a way to persuade other airlines to compete against ultra-low-fare carrier Spirit Airlines for flights out of the Unity airport.

Westmoreland County Airport Authority Executive Director Gabe Monzo said this week he has talked with other discount carriers about providing service to Arnold Palmer Regional, but the answer has been the same — they don’t want to compete with Spirit, which likely would respond by undercutting their ticket prices.

Spirit serves Arnold Palmer Regional with flights to Orlando and seasonal flights to Myrtle Beach, S.C., but it eliminated service to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., last year, despite what airport officials said was a popular destination for passengers.

Other low-fare carriers compete with Spirit at larger airports, including Pittsburgh International in Findlay.

The future of Spirit’s service at Arnold Palmer Regional likely will be a topic of discussion when the airline representatives meet with airport authority officials. That meeting, the first since the covid-related restrictions in March 2020, will not occur until late summer, Monzo said Tuesday. That discussion likely will include talks about resuming flights to Fort Lauderdale.

Spirit has served 55,183 passengers at Arnold Palmer Regional in the first five months this year and 3 million since 2011. Spirit officials didn’t respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

The upcoming meeting comes as the authority is moving ahead with its plans for an estimated $22 million airport terminal expansion project that will add about 32,000 square feet that is designed to improve passenger experience and the updates required by the Transportation Security Administration. Work on demolishing a vacant airport hangar that stands in the way of the terminal expansion project is expected to begin soon, said Scott Kunselman, the airport authority’s engineer.

The terminal project will be done in phases and should be complete in 2026 or early 2027, Kunselman previously said.

Westmoreland County Commissioner Sean Kertes said the goal is to keep Spirit providing service at the airport as long as possible, but there are other low-fare airlines if Spirit curtails service. It is a matter of waiting and seeing what Spirit has in plans for the airport, but contingency plans are in place if it pulls out, Kertes said.

The announcement at the airport authority meeting that a parley is planned with Spirit representatives comes on the heels of the airline revealing last week its plans to cut six routes, primarily long-distance flights — three cross-country — and two from Florida to Puerto Rico. Spirit, however, announced in April it was adding service in Detroit and Houston.

Aviation consultant Michael Boyd, a chairman of Boyd Group Inc. of Evergreen, Colo., who works with Arnold Palmer Regional, said Spirit’s decision to cut some long-distance service is good news for the Unity airport. Unfortunately, Spirit also has announced it is reducing service to Florida, Boyd said.

Simple Flying, an online aviation news publication, stated Spirit will be reducing its Florida flights by 19% in November. Among the airports impacted would be Orlando, which is one of its destinations from Arnold Palmer Regional.

Spirit remains a financially struggling airline that saw its planned $3.8 billion merger with JetBlue Airways — a possible lifeline — scrapped in March in the face of a federal judge’s decision in January to reject the deal and continued opposition from the Biden Administration on the grounds it would be anticompetitive.

Spirit posted a net loss of $142.6 million for the quarter ending March 31, which was worse than the net loss of $103.9 million for the same period in 2023. The company said last month in announcing its first quarter earnings that it plans to roll out a “go forward evolution” in the coming months but did not specify what those plans might be.