About a month after Spirit Airlines ceased operations, other airlines have flooded in to fill the gaps left when it stopped serving the 13 markets it covered from Atlanta.
But Atlanta passengers are still left with a net loss in seats — and only two ultra-low cost carriers: Frontier and Avelo Airlines.
Last year Spirit represented just 2.3% of total volumes at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, carrying about 2.4 million passengers to places including Las Vegas, Orlando and Detroit.
Since the shutdown last month, five other airlines have boosted their Atlanta schedules in Spirit’s former markets, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of data from Cirium, an aviation analytics firm.
Other carriers have added about 1.46 million seats to flights on Spirit’s former routes for the rest of 2026, compared with the same time period in 2025.
The addition, however, does not totally make up for the loss from Spirit.
During the same time last year Spirit flew more than 1.7 million seats in and out of Atlanta.
Spirit had already begun drawing down its Atlanta schedule in recent years as its financial difficulties persisted. In 2023 it flew 3.1 million passengers in and out of the city.
Delta Air Lines and Frontier — Atlanta’s top two carriers by passenger volume — have flooded in the most on the former Spirit markets.
Delta added nearly 518,000 seats to Frontier’s more than 415,000, according to Cirium data.
Overall Delta has added 1.9 million seats in Atlanta year-over-year, a 2% increase for the airline. Frontier has added 2 million, a 30% increase.
Southwest Airlines has had a decline in Atlanta because of a prior decision to pull back on its Atlanta hub.
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Questions also remain across the aviation industry about what will happen to Spirit’s laid off employees and assets — including aircraft and leased space at airports like Atlanta.
According to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filing, Spirit’s liquidation cost 653 employees their Atlanta-based jobs, including 511 flight attendants, 85 pilots and 15 senior technicians. The airline didn’t operate a hub in Atlanta but opened a crew base here in 2022.
Atlanta-based Delta is one of the airlines that accelerated hiring of laid off Spirit crew, but the airline says the process is still early.
Regarding Spirit’s aircraft, some of which are the same type Delta has in its fleet, a Delta spokesman confirmed the airline does not have interest. Its current order book “meets our needs at this time,” he said.
The airline’s leased space and gates across airports — including in Atlanta — will be auctioned off as part of the ongoing bankruptcy court proceedings, Hartsfield-Jackson confirmed to the AJC.
Between space at gates, ticketing and arrival and operations and cargo areas, Spirit’s exclusive leases comprise more than 18,000 square feet of space at the Atlanta airport.
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
Credit: Jason Getz/AJC
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