Spirit blames slower recovery on air traffic control issues in Florida

Spirit Airlines is blaming its slower post-Covid recovery in part on air traffic control staffing issues in its home state of Florida. The Miramar, Florida-based company said on 10 August that its aircraft are still underutilised, and it’s having trouble ramping up its schedule. “We are still constrained on the number of flights we can operate through the Jacksonville air traffic control centre,” Spirit’s chief commercial officer Matt Klein says on the company’s quarterly analyst call. About 40% of the ultra-low-cost carrier’s network in the continental USA touches Florida, he adds. However, that number could be as high as 50% if the constraints surrounding the Jacksonville facility did not exist. A full recovery for the airline will “depend on the infrastructure that supports the aviation industry, most notably the ability to fully deploy our schedule to and from Florida”. ”To help maintain operational reliability we will continue to take a pragmatic approach to capacity deployment from now through the first half of 2023,” Klein adds.<br/>