HANOVER TWP., Pa.- What happens when a region’s major airline carrier suddenly goes away for good?    

It’s an issue the city of Latrobe, a Pittsburgh suburb, is now grappling with following the abrupt shutdown of Spirit Airlines earlier this month.

On Tuesday, Lehigh Northampton Airport Authority (LNAA) Board of Governors Chair Michael Stershic posed a question during the board’s regular meeting: “Are there any lessons that we need to learn from Latrobe, and losing 100 percent of their commercial flights to an airline that went bust?”

Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe was served exclusively by Spirit. According to reporting by The New York Times, when Spirit ceased operations, Latrobe lost its only commercial airline service for the first time since 2011.

Lehigh Valley International Airport (ABE), which is overseen by the LNAA, is served by four carriers: Allegiant, American, Delta and United. “We have good representation from the legacy carriers, we have a very strong low-cost carrier option,” said LNAA Executive Director Tom Stoudt, in response to Stershic’s question.

Allegiant- that low-cost carrier option- offers more non-stop routes at ABE than the other three combined. Allegiant flies to eight destinations in Florida, as well as Denver, Colorado; Nashville, Tennessee, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

American Airlines’ destinations are Charlotte, North Carolina and Philadelphia. Non-stop service to Chicago, Illinois resumes next week.

Delta and United have just one route each: Delta flies to Atlanta, Georgia, and United takes travelers to and from Chicago. 

While ABE certainly relies most heavily on Allegiant for passenger volume and sustainability- the carrier opened a crew base there in 2020- there are no indications that Allegiant is experiencing that same kind of financial distress that doomed Spirit Airlines.

For the first quarter of fiscal 2026, Allegiant reported operating revenue of $732.4 million, up nearly 10 percent from a year ago. Adjusted net income was just under $70 million, more than double the total from the first quarter of 2025.

Earlier this month, Allegiant completed its $1.5 billion acquisition of Sun Country Airlines. Last week, it announced eight new, non-stop routes (all of them outside the Lehigh Valley).

ABE’s continued success, Stoudt said, will hinge on keeping costs down and being a good partner to its carriers.

“It’s a tough market. It’s changed a lot,” Stoudt said. “(There are) a lot fewer airlines today than there were 10 years ago.”

LNAA board member John Hayes agreed with Stoudt’s assessment that ABE has a good balance between the legacy carriers and Allegiant. “A heavier weighting in terms of Allegiant would be increased risk because you’ve got more eggs in one basket,” he said. 

Moving forward, “consistently talking with the legacy carriers about increasing their volume here while we’ve got the capacity to do that and to keep that balance will be critical,” Hayes added.