Skift Travel News Blog

Spirit Airlines’ two-and-a-half year saga to expand at Newark Liberty International Airport has a happy ending. Late on Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded the discounter 16 peak “runway timings” — in short, rights to takeoff and land at an airport during a given hour — that Spirit sued for in December 2019.

The DOT said the award of the timings, which were only available to budget airlines, would boost “low-cost service options” and improve competition at the New York City-area airport. Alaska Airlines and JetBlue Airways also sought the takeoff and landing rights, according to the regulator.

Newark is a major hub for United Airlines, which operates more than 70 percent of all flights at the airport. The timings were previously used by Southwest Airlines until the carrier ended flights to Newark in 2019. And Southwest acquired them in 2010 as a condition of United’s merger with Continental Airlines.

The award comes amid a three-way war of words between JetBlue, Spirit, and United over congestion at Newark. JetBlue and Spirit blame United, and the Federal Aviation Administration, for over scheduling the already congested airport, whereas United has repeatedly made the argument that its much smaller competitors were the problem. In June, United cut its schedule at Newark by roughly 50 daily flights from July 1 through the end of the summer to combat delays.

In an interesting twist, the DOT may need to re-award the timings if JetBlue wins its hostile bid for Spirit. The former carrier has pledged to divest all of Spirit’s assets in Boston and New York — including Newark — if shareholders approve its plan over a competing proposal from Frontier Airlines. Spirit shareholders vote on the Frontier proposal Friday.

Southwest Airlines and JetBlue Airways have both seen travel demand improve since their last second-quarter guidance update in April.

Southwest expects operating revenues to be 12-15 percent higher than in 2019, which is either the upper limit of its previous guidance or three-points higher, the Dallas-based carrier said Thursday. The airline “expects solid profits and operating margins, excluding special items, in second quarter 2022 and for the remainder of this year.”

And JetBlue expects revenues to come in at the high end of the up 11-16 percent year-over-three-years range it previously provided, the New York-based carrier said Thursday. And in June, unit revenues — a measure of how much it makes per seat mile flown — are “shaping up to be meaningfully better” than April and May with an increase of 20 percent compared to 2019.

“The demand environment continues to be strong,” JetBlue said.

Free wifi on flights is a perennial issue that comes up in news every year or two. Delta has tested it on and off since 2019 and JetBlue has been providing free-if-slow wifi on its planes for a few years now. Now CNBC is reporting that Southwest will temporarily offer travelers free Wi-Fi on 40 of its Boeing 737s flights starting this week, as part of an upgrade to the hardware on these planes.

It will be available from May 4 through June 10 on certain flights in the western U.S, as part of its trial. It currently offers Wi-Fi for $8 per day and blocks access to video sites such as Netflix, HBO Max and Zoom.

This comes after Hawaiian Airlines said last month that it will start providing free wifi from early next year using SpaceX’s Starlink service.