IAG the parent company of British Airways, Iberia and Vueling (among others) is finally bringing its long-haul low cost subsidiary to Florida. Level will begin Miami-Barcelona nonstops on March 31, 2024. British Airways and Iberia currently serve the same route in a joint-venture with American Airlines. The two flights will compete with one another which could either cannibalize the market or monopolize it depending on your perspective.
Condor will launch Miami-Frankfurt service this winter. Condor is yet another transatlantic carrier that previously served Fort Lauderdale that now serves Miami instead. That roster continues to grow and in fact this month Norse moved its long-haul services to Oslo and London from FLL to MIA.
Breeze Airways is beginning Orlando and Tampa to Springfield Illinois service this winter in addition to adding Hartford/Springfield to Vero Beach service.
Spirit is using LaGuardia slots to fly NYC LaGuardia-West Palm Beach over the holiday season. These are the same slots that will be among the allocation ceded to Frontier if the Spirit-jetBlue merger is approved. Currently the DOJ is suing to block the merger but speculation is rife that a deal may be imminent.
Included in any deal will be the divestiture of slots and gates in Newark as wall as gates in Boston to Allegiant. I can also report that jetBlue’s return of five gates at Fort Lauderdale to Broward County(Where a combined jetBlue-Spirit entity could control upwards of 50% of local traffic with a large hub in place, a sure concern for the DOJ) will likely also result in more gates Allegiant. So what would this do in Fort Lauderdale? Allegiant doesn’t fly internationally so jetBlue would be giving up gates to an airline that won’t replicate the north/south hub they have at Fort Lauderdale BUT would be allowing a domestic ultra-low cost carrier that already serves about 30 nonstop destinations from Fort Lauderdale to double in size. Ultimately that’s probably good for jetBlue limiting competition internationally while satisfying the DOJ on air fares and maintaining pressure on other competitors domestically.
On another note jetBlue has dropped Fort Lauderdale-Havana service leaving Southwest’s three flights a day as the only remaining FLL-HAV flights. Similarly Delta has dropped Miami-Havana flights, leaving American as the only airline on MIA-HAV. The expected goldmine of south Florida-Cuba flights has failed to materialize.
United will be dropping West Palm Beach-Washington Dulles service for the winter.
Alaska appears to have returned its previously seasonal Fort Lauderdale-Los Angeles to year-round as it was prior to 2021. As of now the flight is scheduled to operate during the summer of 2024 unlike in 2023.
The Florida Squeeze 
UA seems to be dropping quite a few ex-IAD routes. I wonder where that flying will now go?
Also: I didn’t know AS flew FLL-LAX! Seems like an odd route for them, but also kind of perfect.
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Lots of Dulles cuts for UA…they never seem to be getting that hub to work. It’s incredible they have hubbed IAD since 1986 yet never created a consistent flow of traffic through there at any point. I remember multiple times they added flight banks at Dulles just to pull them down a few years later.
FLL-LAX is an odd AS route that appealed to AA FF’s locally but now AA is back on the route itself. Still AS is persisting with it and restoring it to year-round which is great.
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