United Airlines launched ’15 new destinations’ for winter. And they aren’t shy about saying they’re going after Spirit while they’re down. What they’re actually doing is anticompetitive – and revealing their playbook for blocking competition at Newark and beyond.

New routes and added flights include:

• Newark: Orlando; Fort Lauderdale; Columbia, South Carolina; Chattanooga, Tennessee
  
• Houston: Orlando; Las Vegas; New Orleans; Atlanta; Baltimore; Miami; Guatemala City; San Salvador; San Pedro Sula
  
• Chicago: Orlando; Fort Lauderdale; New Orleans; Las Vegas
  
• Los Angeles: Las Vegas

United’s Senior Vice President of Network Planning doesn’t mince words: they’re gunning for Spirit:

If Spirit suddenly goes out of business it will be incredibly disruptive, so we’re adding these flights to give their customers other options if they want or need them.

Now, this is incredibly disingenuous:

1. “If Spirit suddenly goes out of business” because we’re dumping capacity in their markets
   
2. They aren’t trying to ‘give Spirit’s customers other options’, they aren’t worried about Spirit’s customers they are accelerating Spirit’s demise which is bad for customers, which would remove seats from the market and raise fares.
   
3. And they’re not helping Spirit’s customers by focusing adds primarily on cities that Spirit is pulling out of – like Birmingham; Boise; Oakland; Sacramento; San Diego; San Jose; or Portland.

Now, Spirit is exiting Chattanooga and Columbia, South Carolina. United’s promotion of Columbia as a ‘new route’ is being misreported as “the carrier will for the first time link Newark, New Jersey, with Columbia, South Carolina.” Memories are short!

Columbia is the famous “Chairman’s Flight” that ousted former United CEO Jeff Smisek in a corruption scandal, as he got caught up in the New Jersey Bridgegate investigation. United operated the route as a payoff to the Chairman of the Port Authority of New York New Jersey, David Samon, who demanded air service to his vacation home in exchange for including items United wanted at Newark airport on the Port Authority agenda.

United Airlines entered into a Non‑Prosecution Agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for New Jersey in 2016, agreeing to pay a $2.25 million penalty and enhance its compliance policies in exchange for avoiding prosecution. Oscar Munoz was rushed into the Chairman’s role in 2015, despite not having airline experience. Samson pled guilty to bribery over the routing setup.

Meanwhile the hypocrisy on United’s part adding these Newark flights is risible. CEO Scott Kirby has repeatedly slammed Newark’s over-scheduling and pushed for federal limits to flying there (which would basically protect United from competition, blocking new flights by competitors and entrenching their stronghold).

• In a May 2025 letter to customers, he wrote that Newark cannot handle the current flight volume and that they were forced to cancel 35 roundtrip daily flights to protect customers. He urged the government to designate Newark as a Level 3, slot‑controlled airport.

• In an internal communications memo he insisted returning to a slot-control system is the only way to manage capacity, among other measures.

  In ideal weather, with full staffing and with perfectly functioning technology, the FAA tells us that the airport can only handle 77 flights per hour. And yet, the FAA regularly approves schedules of 80+ flights per hour almost every day…

• Just like these schedule adds are being framed as ‘protecting customers’, Kirby framed the need to limit flights out of Newark as protecting customers.

  Newark airport cannot handle the number of planes that are scheduled to operate there in the weeks and months ahead … We feel like there is no other choice in order to protect our customers.

What this actually shows is what a bad idea slots and FAA schedule coordination are. In almost any business and market the classic antitrust play of lowering prices and flooding the market with capacity to drive out a competitor and then raising prices fails. That’s because those higher profits draw in new competitors.

Here, government assigns the right to fly to incumbent carriers blocking those new competitors. United can try to drive Spirit out of Newark and then block new entrants to compete with them.

That is one reason congestion pricing would be so muxh better than slots for consumers but we won’t get it because it doesn’t benefit.. incumbent airlines (for crude public choice reasons of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs).

United, of course, would love little more than to squeeze Spirit out of Newark and also squeeze them out of business to where they’re selling off assets that they still want to operate. United could then bid to pick up their Fort Lauderdale gates, filling a gap in the airline’s network. For a year and a half there’s been talk of how can United grow in Florida and this points the way.

Update: Spirit Airlines Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications Duncan Dee responds,

While we appreciate the obsession certain airline executives have with us, we’re focused on competing and running a great operation. Suggesting anything else is wishful thinking on the part of a high-cost airline looking to eliminate a low-cost competitor so they can fulfill their ultimate goal of charging American travelers the highest fares possible to visit the people and places they love. 

Spirit is responsible for making low fares available to consumers for more than 30 years, whether they fly with us or not. We have every expectation to continue doing so for many years to come.