Spirit Airlines has added a new flight to Birmingham, Alabama, connecting one of the most populous cities in the state with one of the New York area airports.
Connections to New York
As flagged by AeroRoutes and confirmed by data from the aviation analytics company Cirium’s Diio Mi airline planning tool, Spirit Airlines will add a daily flight between Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) and Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport (BHM).
The daily flight could be a seasonal itinerary, lasting between June and August. The low-cost carrier will deploy its Airbus A320neo aircraft to operate the flights, which will become one out of two new routes for the airline from Newark in June.
The other is to Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD), with an asterisk. Spirit Airlines began operating flights between Newark and Chicago-O’Hare in July 2024, with its schedules showing that the carrier plans to continue flying the itinerary at least until August.
However, Spirit Airlines has not filed schedule data beyond that month, which could mean that flights to Birmingham and Chicago-O’Hare could continue into Autumn.
Birmingham’s connectivity to New York
Delta Air Lines flies between New York-LaGuardia and Birmingham with flights operated by Endeavor Air, its regional subsidiary that flies Delta Connection itineraries with regional jets.
As such, Delta Air Lines will schedule 20 weekly flights on the route, all operated by the Mitsubishi CRJ900 , seating 76 passengers. In comparison, Spirit Airlines’ A320neo that will be deployed on the route will have 176 seats or more than twice the capacity of the CRJ900.
Between May 2023 and April 2024, American Airlines and the regional capacity provider for its American Eagle brand, Republic Airways, operated six weekly flights from New York-LaGuardia and Birmingham with an Embraer E175 .
However, after leaving the market in 2024, American Airlines left Delta Air Lines with a monopoly that Spirit Airlines will attempt to break, at least during the three summer months.
Tweaking the Newark network
This includes removing flights to at least six destinations from Newark, including Boston Logan International Airport (BOS) and Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (PHX), while adding flights on its already-operated routes, such as to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) or Charlotte Douglas International Airport (CLT), both of which are significant hubs for Delta Air Lines and American Airlines, respectively.
JetBlue has also cut its flights between Boston and New York, confirming to Simple Flying that it axed all flights connecting Boston and New York-LaGuardia in part due to its strategic refocus on building the best East Coast leisure network and in part because of excessive landing fees.
Nevertheless, Spirit Airlines, which is still undergoing Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings that began in November 2024, opened a pilot base in Newark in May 2024.
At the time, the airline disclosed that it would base around 200 pilots at the airport, with the carrier growing to become the second-largest airline in Newark.
In June, it will keep its second place at the airport. The third-largest airline in terms of weekly departures at Newark airport is Delta Air Lines, with 203, while the largest, and by a large margin, is United Airlines , with 2,449 weekly departures.
