HARRISBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — No airport is more important to Spirit Airlines than Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. But flip the question, and the airline is even more important to other airports.

Spirit, which the Wall Street Journal reported Friday evening could be in its final hours, scheduled more departing seats from Fort Lauderdale — 5,724,902 — for the past 12 months (May 1, 2025, through April 30, 2026) than from any other airport, according to a Nexstar analysis of Cirium/Diio Mi airline schedule data. (The top 15 airports are listed below.)

And to be sure, the impact at Fort Lauderdale on air service alone — never mind the broader economic impact in a region where the airline’s new headquarters building abuts the airport — would be big.

But in terms of the percentage of seats at an airport scheduled by Spirit as opposed to other airlines, Fort Lauderdale — where Spirit has accounted for 28% of all scheduled seats during the past year, according to the analysis — isn’t the airport where Spirit’s demise would hurt most.

That airport would be small Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe, Pennsylvania — about an hour’s drive east of Pittsburgh (Spirit has long marketed Latrobe as an alternative to Pittsburgh International) — where fully 100% of the 87,296 seats scheduled during the past year have been on Spirit’s yellow and black planes.

At Atlantic City, New Jersey (where, as at nearly all its airports, Spirit has already shrunk its footprint as it took airplanes out of service to try to stay aloft), the figure is 94%, according to the analysis. The top 15 list by that metric is also below.

Historically, when an airline stops flying — and by most measures, no U.S. airline as large as Spirit has stopped flying since Eastern did so in 1991 — other airlines eventually “backfill,” in airline parlance, much of what was lost. That’s especially true at airports like New York LaGuardia and Chicago O’Hare, where gates and the “slots” required to operate most flights are precious.

But in terms of which airports would lose the most total service in the short term, Spirit’s top 15 airports by departing seats scheduled from May 2025 through April 2026 are: Fort Lauderdale (5,724,902), Orlando (3,797,099), Las Vegas (2,203,018), Detroit (2,109,577), Newark (1,742,651), Houston Intercontinental (1,486,386), Atlanta (1,399,919), Dallas-Fort Worth (1,217,968), Chicago O’Hare (1,185,141), New York-LaGuardia (1,149,627), Los Angeles LAX (1,025,825), Baltimore-Washington (880,562), Miami (832,794), New Orleans (802,469) and Tampa (729,729).

In percentage terms — the percentage of all seats at an airport (also for May 2025 through April 2026) scheduled by Spirit as opposed to other airlines, the top 15 most impacted airports are: Latrobe 100%, Atlantic City 94%, Fort Lauderdale 28%, Myrtle Beach 23%, Tegucigalpa (Honduras) 20%, San Pedro Sula (Honduras) 17%, St. Thomas 15%, St. Croix 13%, Orlando 11%, Detroit 10%, New Orleans 10%, Armenia (Colombia) 9%, San Juan (Puerto Rico) 8%, Pensacola (Florida) 8% and Las Vegas 7%.

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Note the abundance of Caribbean and Central American destinations. Spirit’s business model has long included transporting price-sensitive visiting friends and relatives (or “VFR” traffic, in airline parlance) to see each other — and budget-conscious leisure travelers to popular destinations.

President Trump had raised the possibility of a $550 million government bailout for Spirit. But a broad coalition of analytical and political voices, including Republicans who often align with Trump on other issues, warned against the idea.

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