Frontier and Spirit, low-cost carriers at Charlotte airport, detail big merger plans
Two of the low-cost airlines offering flights to popular vacation destinations out of Charlotte Douglas International Airport announced a $6.6 billion merger agreement on Monday.
Spirit Airlines and Frontier Group Holdings, the parent company of Frontier Airlines, announced plans to merge, calling the move a strategy to allow the airlines to “compete even more aggressively,” with dominant airlines including American Airlines, the dominant carrier at Charlotte Douglas.
American Airlines operates about 90% of all flights from CLT, though 14 other airlines, including Spirit and Frontier, operate at the airport. Spirit first began offering flights out of CLT in 2019.
Spirit and Frontier offer competing routes out of CLT to Orlando and Las Vegas. Frontier also offers flights to Philadelphia, Trenton, New Jersey, and Denver out of CLT, and Spirit also offers flights to Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Frontier spokeswoman Jennifer De La Cruz declined to give specific details on how the merge could affect flight details at the Charlotte airport.
Nationally, the airlines say the combined companies are expected to offer more than 1,000 daily flights to over 145 destinations in 19 countries.
The merger is expected to close in the second half of the year.
Charlotte airport recovery
Charlotte’s airport saw a drastic drop in passenger traffic in early 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic hit North Carolina.
But the airport is on the way to recovery, CLT officials announced last week.
Charlotte’s airport saw 43 million travelers last year, up 59% from the 27 million passengers who traveled through the airport in 2020 during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic.
That number is 86% of the record-breaking 50.2 million passengers who traveled to, from and through CLT in 2019 before COVID hit N.C., according to the airport.
This story was originally published February 7, 2022 at 2:34 PM.
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