Since its proposed merger with Frontier Airlines was announced in February, most of the news surrounding Spirit Airlines has been in the financial pages. However, Spirit has continued offering new routes and services and generally doing everything possible to get customers where they want to go.

While the Frontier Airlines and JetBlue saga is nearing an end, at CAPA's recent Americas Aviation and LCCs Summit in Puerto Rico, Spirit Airlines' EVP and chief commercial officer, Matt Klein, said that passenger demand was the strongest he had seen in his 27-year career. He told the audience that there was a rush to book spring break and Easter travel in March and that bookings had now plateaued at a very strong level. He described pricing as very healthy, and at levels he would not expect to see this early in the booking curve.

"Meaning we're getting able to charge higher fares that you wouldn't normally see this far out for summer travel."

What is a blended traveler?

The 'blended traveler' concept describes the trend for customers to combine leisure and business trips, which Klein also says often applies to those working remotely from home. He said many more customers are flying for business reasons, such as for new jobs, remote working or training, which is not necessarily what business travel used to be. He said this is creating a lot more travel and that a new customer segment has been created organically, where VFR (visiting friends and relatives) travel and business travel are rolled into one. As an example, Klein said:

"If you used to live in New York and you moved to Nashville for work, but your family and friends are still in New York, then there's a lot more flights in both directions, which may have been purely vacation or VFR traffic before."

The pandemic changed many things, one of which was the time between a booking was made, and the date of the flight was taken. Referring to the US, Latin America and the Caribbean, Klein said that at the onset of COVID, the booking curve shortened to a "highly abnormal" seven days. While 'back to normal' is almost meaningless today, Spirit has seen that curve shrink and expand in response to COVID impacts, which has played havoc with scheduling capacity.

Surges in demand are not new but what's new is not having the resources, be they people, aircraft or airport services, in place to handle them. So if an issue arose at an airport or with scheduling, the resources were available to sort it out. "You knew that you had the right amount of staff at the airports, in your crew scheduling or revenue management department, but then some of those groups were really having trouble filling those roles," he said.

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Latin America and the Caribbean are Spirit growth spots

Looking for growth opportunities, Spirit decided to lift its presence in Latin America and the Caribbean, which has now doubled to around 20% of the network. An important part is VFR traffic, such as in Puerto Rico, where Klein said low fares are vital because it's not a vacation trip. For vacation travel, he said Spirit wants to be where people want to go, such as places like Las Vegas, Orlando, Los Angeles and New York, the largest leisure destination in the country. Klein added: "At Spirit that's what we do. We create travel opportunities with our low fares and point-to-point service."

Are there any blended travelers out there that relate to this concept?

Source: CAPA