Budget airlines keep cutting Orlando flights -- what's going on?


The post Budget Airlines Are Canceling Routes to the Orlando Airport – Should We Be Worried? first appeared on the disney food blog.

So many of us choose to fly when we go to Disney World, which generally means flying into Orlando International Airport.



Orlando Airport

Most of us are also pretty dutiful in checking airfare prices, looking for deals, and scoring the best prices we can for those flights. That’s where the budget airlines come in. But recently, we’ve noticed a troubling trend. Some budget airlines are cutting routes to Orlando International Airport (MCO). So we have to ask — is this going to continue, and should we be concerned?



Let’s take a look at airlines that have cut flights from Orlando. Recently, Spirit Airlines cut all its routes from Raleigh-Durhan International Airport (RDU) to MCO. The route had 53 routes in April 2023, but by November, it had been narrowed down to just 14. It’s likely that there just weren’t enough flyers from RDU to MCO to keep the routes going, especially after the airline is struggling due to a failed merger with JetBlue.



Spirit Airlines at Orlando Airport

Avelo Airlines also pulled its flights to Orlando from Raleigh-Durham International Airport, according to CBS 17. An Avelo Airlines spokeswoman said, “For these routes, there is a lot of demand from multiple carriers from RDU and our planes are better used on other RDU routes.”



©Orlando International Airport

Frontier Airlines is ending flights from Harrisburg International Airport in Pennsylvania to Orlando. The airline is expected to end flights to Orlando from seven other cities later in 2024. This move is likely due to a “network strategy shift.”



Frontier Plane at the Orlando Airport

One airline, Canada’s Lynx Airlines, recently stopped flying EVERYWHERE, including Orlando. The company had previously shown significant growth, but after exploring cost reductions and efforts to be sold or merged, its financial issues had become “too significant to overcome.”



©Lynx Air

So what’s going on? Well, with the case of Raleigh-Durham International Airport, it sounds like the competition is just too stiff, and people are choosing other airlines or other ways to get to Orlando. However, it also seems like the budget airlines are struggling financially. Spirit was blindsided when its merger with JetBlue was blocked. Frontier seems to be focusing its efforts on specific markets rather than spreading itself too thin.



Orlando International Airport

So, do we need to worry about flights to Orlando? Well, it could be harder to get a flight on a budget airline to Orlando, but the larger airlines continue to fly into and out of Orlando every day.

Orlando International Airport

Some also fear this could keep airfare prices higher, as there will be less competition for flights into and out of Orlando. We’ll have to wait and see how these flight cuts affect things at Orlando International Airport.


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What do you think? Will more budget flights be cut from Orlando? Let us know in the comments!


The post Budget Airlines Are Canceling Routes to the Orlando Airport – Should We Be Worried? first appeared on the disney food blog.