Why you can’t afford to fight for the death of Spirit & Frontier

Low-cost airlines are our most important airlines in the USA – even for travelers who have previously sworn off them.

In recent months, airlines like Spirit and Frontier Airlines have started changing things up. To attract more customers and woo investors, Spirit eliminated its change and cancellation fees and then abandoned its old, cheap fare structures to offer fare packages that include things like free seat assignment and a carry-on bag. Sound familiar? That’s exactly what you’ll find in the fares of major airlines like Alaska, American, Delta and United. Frontier made the same change earlier this year.

For these airlines, big changes like this one show a kind of desperation to keep the business afloat. After a Spirit-Frontier merger was thwarted by a Spirit-JetBlue merger—which was also ultimately thwarted—the two big low-cost carriers found themselves alone in an environment where travelers were less inclined to buy their base fares and turning to the major airlines.

In short: Spirit and Frontier are raising the white flag with their business models.

These fundamental changes at two of the U.S.’s low-cost carriers are not a sign of healthy and thriving airlines. But if you want to attack Spirit while they’re grounded because you’ve had one or more bad experiences with them, you’re missing the bigger picture here.

The health of low-cost airlines in the U.S. is critical to keeping airfares affordable, and these recent changes at Spirit and Frontier will result in higher airfares for their customers and all other airlines as well.

If you never want to fly Spirit or Frontier again, that’s completely understandable. Both airlines have issues with the reliability of their flights and there is a serious lack of capacity in their networks, leading to cascading delays and cancellations. Both airlines also offered low prices, such as Spirit’s $19 one-way fares, only to then charge fees for everything from seats to luggage to purchasing the ticket online. These annoyances turned off travelers who never returned.

Read more: Why you should love Spirit Airlines (even if you never fly with them)

But those travelers who now fly with American, Alaska, Delta and United should be hoping Spirit succeeds, because without Spirit’s competitive prices, your flights on the major airlines will only get more expensive.

Let’s look at a perfect example of this pricing power. Let’s say you live in Minneapolis (MSP) and want to book a mountain adventure. Should you fly to Denver (DEN) or Salt Lake City (SLC)? Both are major western hub airports, both just a few hours nonstop from Minneapolis.

The first search looks for flights to Denver, and Frontier’s influence is immediately apparent.

Because Frontier has slashed round-trip prices to insane lows, companies like United, Delta and Southwest have to keep prices low to stay competitive. Even though you have to pay extra for carry-on luggage and coffee on Frontier flights, many travelers will give Frontier a chance for a $38 round-trip flight.

Read more: A cheap flight, a hard seat and high fees: Our Frontier Airlines test

Let’s look at the exact same search for flights to and from Salt Lake City.

Are you missing Frontier yet, Delta flyers?

Delta has very little competition on this Salt Lake City route (only sporadic, weekly flights with Sun Country), so the behemoth can basically dictate its price and there’s nothing you can do about it. The flight is only about 50 minutes longer than the Denver flight…but is about $400 more expensive in many cases.

Spirit and Frontier do this to all the major airlines serve hundreds of domestic and Caribbean routes in the U.S. every day. We desperately need low-cost carriers like them and companies like Allegiant, Avelo and Breeze to stay healthy as well.

Perhaps the ultimate answer is a repeat of the Spirit-Frontier merger, where the two airlines attempted to combine their similar fleets and business models into a single large, probably healthier ultra-low-cost carrier. That airline could compete across the country on hundreds of routes that desperately need more competition. And they could stop competing against each other, which has certainly hurt both companies’ profits over the years (how many flights do you need to Fort Lauderdale and Orlando every day, anyway?). A strong, unified ULCC like this one could be the answer.

Because if Spirit and Frontier died, you’d have problems like MSP-SLC, where round-trip nonstop fares haven’t fallen below $450 in years.

Life without Spirit and Frontier is a nightmare for budget travelers, even if you never fly with them. If you’re yearning for the demise of these airlines, you’re wrong.

Conclusion

The ultra-low-cost airlines in the US have fallen on hard times, but we should all keep our fingers crossed that they pull through. Without airlines like Spirit and Frontier, Americans will soon face rising prices for domestic flights.

Competition is key in the airline industry, and travelers can count on Spirit and Frontier to thrive this year and beyond, keeping airfares low across the board.