Officials say flights to Fort Lauderdale to resume from Arnold Palmer Regional Airport
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Direct flights from Arnold Palmer Regional Airport to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., will resume in May, the Westmoreland County Airport Authority announced on Friday.
Spirit Airlines will initially operate two weekly flights to the south Florida city, a move that officials said will return profitability and jobs to Westmoreland County’s lone commuter airport.
“This shows Spirit is committed to Latrobe and is bringing business back,” said Gabe Monzo, executive director of the county’s airport authority. “We’ve got no way to go but up and shows great promise for things to come.”
Daily flights from Westmoreland County to Fort Lauderdale were halted December 2022.
Officials said Spirit will begin the Fort Lauderdale flights on May 8, the same day daily service to Myrtle Beach in South Carolina is slated to restart after being on hiatus since November. Spirit in February resumed daily flights from the Latrobe-area airport to Orlando, after having scaled back service last fall to just four weekly round-trip flights.
Spirit, a Florida-based low-cost carrier, is working to emerge from bankruptcy after a failed merger with Jet Blue last year when the courts sided with federal regulators who opposed the deal over anti-trust concerns. The airline reportedly rejected another takeover bid last month from rival Frontier Airlines.
Questions about Spirit’s future hung over local operations at the Unity airport as officials waited for resolution of the airline’s financial situation amid the loss of local service. Spirit’s reduction in flights plunged the authority into red ink, causing it to lose about $15,000 a month and resulted in the transfer of 10 full-time jobs — including ticket counter service and baggage handling — to part-time status. The authority employs about 50 workers.
It operates with a $5.5 million budget that is funded in part through a $2.6 annual allocation from Westmoreland County and generates revenue from fees including $750 paid by Spirit for every landing at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport.
Officials said the anticipated return of the daily Myrtle Beach flights could enable the authority to break even. The Fort Lauderdale flights are expected to provide positive cash flow, Monzo said.
“It will allow us to bring everybody back to full time,” Monzo said of employees at the airport.
Spirit as of Friday morning had yet to update its online schedule to reflect the Fort Lauderdale flights.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
May 8 figures to be a busy day at the airport with the anticipated inaugural flights to Myrtle Beach and Fort Lauderdale joining the daily scheduled service to Orlando. In all, six flights — three inbound and outbound — are expected to be on the schedule, the most in traffic the airport had seen in about a year.
It comes as work continues on a $22 million expansion and upgrade of the airport terminal.
Monzo said the ongoing construction is not expected to impact the flight schedule or passengers in the terminal.
“Things could be a little tight, but we’ll manage it. The construction is at the north end of the field so it won’t interrupt with day-to-day operations yet. It might create some challenges later in the year, but we’ll handle it,” Monzo said.