Spirit Airlines gets bigger in Las Vegas

[Grandpa +65]

UPDATED 1:25 p.m. ET
Spirit Airlines is boosting its presence in Las Vegas, adding nonstop routes to Oakland and Portland, Ore., and San Diego.
Service to Oakland will begin Aug. 18, with two daily round-trip flights. That will increase to three daily round-trip flights on Sept. 7.
MORE ON SPIRIT: Spirit adds $5 fee for printing boarding pass at airport
On Sept. 7, Spirit will begin flying three daily round-trip flights between San Diego and Las Vegas.
Spirit's Las Vegas-Portland service will begin Sept. 22, with the carrier offering two daily round-trip flights.
Spirit will go head-to-head with formidable rivals. From Oakland and San Diego, Spirit will compete against nonstop service offered by Southwest. From Portland, Spirit will go up against both Southwest and Alaska Airlines.
With the new routes, Spirit will now fly from Las Vegas to eight destinations. Chicago O'Hare, Dallas/Fort Worth, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale and Los Angeles are the others.
Las Vegas airport spokeswoman Elaine Sanchez notes the growth in a Spirit release, saying:
"One year ago, Spirit Airlines was operating four departures a day to two destinations. Spirit Airlines continues to expand service to bring great value but more importantly, additional seats to the Las Vegas market.

Does this means the next Spirit Hub?


http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/post/2011/06/spirit-airlines-las-vegas-portland-oakland/175391/1

 

[Mike man]

Does this means the next Spirit Hub?

Management said (in a conference call last week) not for now.

And not that I like all the crappy fees we have...the $5 for printing a boarding pass is actually in the form of a credit, in that if you print you own boarding pass at home you receive a $5 credit...or, instead of adding fees you can deselect the boarding pass fee and receive $5 off your ticket.

 

[enigma]

Management said (in a conference call last week) not for now.

And not that I like all the crappy fees we have...the $5 for printing a boarding pass is actually in the form of a credit, in that if you print you own boarding pass at home you receive a $5 credit...or, instead of adding fees you can deselect the boarding pass fee and receive $5 off your ticket.

The latest rumor is a satellite base in LAS. Who knows what that means. Most likely, it will be the same as a real base but you won't have contractual protections in the areas of vacation, travel to training, conflict bidding, etc. Considering the sheite storm that happened last time a base was opened , I doubt that the union will go for it.

 

[johnsonrod]

Not a surprise. Commodity product for a commodity market. Price is the biggest factor on the Vegas routes for many customers and Spirit has a low cost structure to support lower fares. I think Spirit is one of the few carriers in terms of cost structure that can take on SWA in low margin markets... At this point, seat volume becomes the issue and they need to add more flights and seats to squeek out a small margin per flight (so long as a high % of seats are full). It will be an interesting experiment to watch...