Which airlines will take control of the takeoff and landing slots at LaGuardia that were held by Spirit Airlines prior to their May 2026 bankruptcy?

TL;DR

Frontier is the lead forecast at 53.1% because it is the closest Spirit substitute, held only 4 LGA slots in the latest FAA holder file, and already had a signed 2023 deal to receive this exact Spirit LaGuardia package (FAA Summer 2025 LGA holder report; JetBlue-Frontier press release, June 1 2023). JetBlue, Other airline(s), Southwest, and American remain live because a split sale or regulatory compromise can give more than one carrier at least one former Spirit slot pair. Delta, United, and Alaska are low-probability outcomes because the FAA holder file shows Delta and American already dominate LGA while United and Alaska lack the low-fare replacement story (FAA Summer 2025 LGA holder report).

Context

Spirit announced an orderly wind-down on May 2, 2026, cancelled all flights, and told customers not to go to the airport (Spirit SEC exhibit, May 2 2026). The live process is a court-supervised sale: Spirit filed bidding procedures on May 27, 2026; the final qualified-bid deadline for the LGA slots was June 30, 2026; and the auction is scheduled for July 9, 2026 (Spirit sale motion, Doc. 1117).

The official unit is probably not 22 slot pairs. The FAA Summer 2025 holder report, with status date Dec. 5, 2025 and excluding FAA-held slots and slots held fewer than five days, lists Spirit with 22 LGA slots, or operating authorizations, out of 1,141 listed slots (FAA Summer 2025 LGA holder report). Public reporting also describes 22 slots as enough for roughly 11 to 12 daily flights because a round trip needs both an arrival and a departure right (The Points Guy, May 28 2026).

Evidence

The historical backbone is that LaGuardia slots are valuable, transferable in practice, and not ordinary property. The FAA order now in force through Oct. 28, 2028 keeps LGA at 71 scheduled operating authorizations per hour, imposes an 80% minimum-use rule, lets FAA retire or reallocate surrendered or unassigned OAs, and allows carrier trades or leases for consideration only with written FAA approval before the transaction takes effect (Federal Register, June 23 2026). In the closest bankruptcy precedent, ATA ceased operations in 2008 while holding 14 LGA slots; the FAA said the OAs could not themselves be sold, but would allocate the 14 slots to an air-carrier buyer that acquired ATA in bankruptcy and would waive usage requirements for up to six months (FAA ATA clarification, Oct. 31 2008). Southwest then bought the ATA package, which is why the bankruptcy path is real, but it still runs through FAA approval and facility access.

The merger-divestiture precedents point away from Delta and American. In the Delta-US Airways slot swap, DOT approved a large LGA/DCA transaction only after requiring divestitures; the FAA auctioned the divested LGA slots in bundles, limited bidding to carriers with less than 5% of the relevant airport slots and no large-carrier codeshare there, and awarded LGA bundles to JetBlue and WestJet (DOT announcement, Aug. 1 2019, describing the 2011 process). In the American-US Airways settlement, DOJ required slots and gates at constrained airports to go to low-cost carrier airlines, and Southwest later said it acquired 12 LGA takeoff-and-landing slots plus permanent control of 10 slots it had leased from American (DOJ settlement, Nov. 12 2013; Southwest press release, Dec. 5 2013).

The concentration data makes the regulatory story concrete. The latest FAA holder report I found has this status date and coverage: Dec. 5, 2025; Summer 2025; regular holder totals; excludes FAA-held slots and slots held fewer than five days; N = 12 listed holder groups; total listed slots = 1,141 (FAA Summer 2025 LGA holder report).

Frontier has the best fit. JetBlue and Frontier signed a definitive agreement on June 1, 2023 under which JetBlue would divest all of Spirit's LGA holdings to Frontier if the JetBlue-Spirit merger closed; the package was six Marine Air Terminal gates and 22 takeoff and landing slots, subject to Port Authority and FAA/DOT approval (JetBlue-Frontier press release, June 1 2023). FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford later said the former Spirit slots should go to a low-fare airline for the public good, and that retirement would be an option if that cannot happen (AirlineGeeks, May 28 2026). Frontier is the only listed ULCC with an already negotiated story for this exact asset; the counterweight is that Frontier's management has also said it will be disciplined on Spirit-asset purchases, so I do not make it an overwhelming favorite (The Points Guy, May 28 2026).

JetBlue is plausible but not clean. It is a New York carrier, held only 31 LGA slots in the Dec. 5, 2025 FAA holder report, and moved aggressively into Spirit's Fort Lauderdale vacuum with 11 new destinations and a plan for nearly 130 daily FLL departures in summer 2026 (FAA Summer 2025 LGA holder report; JetBlue press release, May 4 2026). The downside is that JetBlue had previously agreed to divest this exact LGA package to Frontier, and current reporting says JetBlue is reducing parts of its Newark and LaGuardia infrastructure while shifting resources toward Fort Lauderdale (JetBlue-Frontier press release, June 1 2023; Aviation Week, June 18 2026).

Southwest is the next cleanest listed regulatory fit. It is not a Spirit-style ULCC, but it is a low-fare carrier with LGA precedent: it got ATA's 2008 bankruptcy slots and later received LGA slots in the American-US Airways divestiture process (FAA ATA clarification, Oct. 31 2008; Southwest press release, Dec. 5 2013). American is a real bidder class because it can pay and its CEO said American has a long history of being aggressive when assets become available, but its 327-slot LGA position creates a worse approval story (The Points Guy, May 28 2026; FAA Summer 2025 LGA holder report). Delta faces the steepest concentration problem at 511 slots; United has less concentration risk but Newark is its New York hub and its CEO said he did not expect United to participate in consolidation for the foreseeable future; Alaska has little LGA-specific strategic logic (The Points Guy, May 28 2026; FAA Summer 2025 LGA holder report).

Other airline(s) is not a throwaway. The most concrete named dark horse in public reporting is Porter, which could use U.S. preclearance at Toronto Billy Bishop to move some New York flying from Newark to LaGuardia if it obtained slots (The Points Guy, May 28 2026). WestJet is a precedent-supported Other because DOT awarded it a LaGuardia bundle in the Delta-US Airways divestiture, while Breeze or Allegiant are less-proven possibilities because they have added flying in former Spirit markets (DOT announcement, Aug. 1 2019; The Points Guy, May 28 2026). The small size of the Spirit package and the Terminal A facility issue make a single operator simpler than many small awards.

My final estimate uses a scenario tree. I put 65% on one main buyer taking the package, 25% on a split or conditioned sale, 6% on FAA/DOT reallocation after a sale problem, and 4% on retirement, litigation delay, or annulment by the 2028 deadline. In the single-buyer branch I used lead-buyer shares of Frontier 52%, JetBlue 13%, Southwest 12%, American 10%, Other 7%, United 3%, Delta 2%, and Alaska 1%. In the split branch I used inclusion probabilities of Frontier 65%, JetBlue 50%, Other 50%, Southwest 42%, American 35%, United 11%, Delta 6%, and Alaska 4%; in the reallocation branch I used Frontier 50%, Other 55%, JetBlue 30%, Southwest 30%, American 8%, United 4%, Alaska 3%, and Delta 2%. That produces Frontier 53.1%, JetBlue 22.8%, Other 20.4%, Southwest 20.1%, American 15.7%, United 4.9%, Delta 2.9%, and Alaska 1.8%.

What's non-obvious

The sale is not a normal auction where the richest bidder wins. Spirit's estate is trying to maximize recovery, but the winning bid has to be usable: FAA approval, DOT competition policy, and Port Authority facility control all matter, and the Port Authority has already argued that slots have no practical value without airport-facility permission (The Points Guy, June 9 2026). That makes a lower Frontier or Southwest bid more plausible than a higher American or Delta bid if it closes faster and satisfies regulators.

The other easy mistake is to overread the words slot pairs. The best official inventory I found says Spirit held 22 individual LGA slots, not 22 pairs, and that makes the package closer to 11 daily round trips than a large hub-building opportunity (FAA Summer 2025 LGA holder report; The Points Guy, May 28 2026). A package this size is big enough to matter to Frontier or Southwest, but small enough that a clean single-carrier transfer is easier than a complex multi-carrier redesign of Terminal A.

Limitations

I found no public list of qualified bidders or bid amounts by July 2, 2026, even though the final qualified-bid deadline was June 30 and the auction is scheduled for July 9 (Spirit sale motion, Doc. 1117). A leaked qualified-bidder list, a stalking-horse bid, or an FAA/DOT condition letter would move these probabilities quickly.

The FAA holder data is the cleanest slot-count source, but its status date is Dec. 5, 2025, and it is a holder report rather than an operator report (FAA Summer 2025 LGA holder report). The court sale, FAA transfer approval, and Port Authority gate assignment can diverge, so the first announced court winner may not be the final resolution winner. I also assign a real 4% chance that the slots are retired, tied up, or otherwise never produce a clear airline-control resolution before May 2, 2028, because the FAA order allows retirement of surrendered or unassigned OAs above the 71-per-hour cap and the FAA Administrator explicitly raised retirement as a fallback (Federal Register, June 23 2026; AirlineGeeks, May 28 2026).