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 Airlines is the best forecast to receive at least one former Spirit LaGuardia slot pair, while Southwest is the main fallback and a split award keeps JetBlue, American, and a Porter-type “Other” outcome live.

Context

Spirit announced an immediate wind-down on May 2, 2026, canceled all flights, and said refunds and other claims would be handled through the bankruptcy process (Spirit restructuring statement, May 2, 2026). I found no final FAA, DOT, or bankruptcy-court allocation as of June 4, 2026. The live process is a proposed bankruptcy sale: Spirit’s estate is marketing its LaGuardia slots on their own track, with a June 10 procedures hearing, June 30 final-bid deadline, July 9 auction, and July 17 target for regulatory approvals in the summarized bidding procedures (Epiq docket 1118, filed May 27, 2026; Stretto summary of docket 1117, June 1, 2026).

The best count is 22 individual LaGuardia slots, not 22 daily round trips. DOT defines one slot as one takeoff or one landing authorization, and FAA’s latest pre-shutdown public operator report lists Spirit with 22 LGA operating authorizations; The Points Guy separately reported on May 28 that the estate valued those slots near $87 million and expected a July 9 auction (DOT slot definition, last updated Dec. 20, 2024; FAA Summer 2025 LGA operator totals, report timestamp Dec. 9, 2025; The Points Guy, May 28, 2026).

Evidence

The historical backbone is small, but it points one way. In the 2011 Delta–US Airways slot-swap remedy, DOT/FAA required divestitures at LGA and DCA, limited eligibility to carriers with less than 5% of the relevant airport’s slots, sold the 16 LGA slot pairs in two bundles, and awarded one LGA bundle to JetBlue and one to WestJet even though JetBlue bid highest for all three bundles across LGA and DCA (DOT, Aug. 1, 2019 recap). In the 2013 American–US Airways merger settlement, DOJ required 34 LaGuardia slots and related facilities to be divested to low-cost-carrier purchasers, with preference for carriers that did not already hold a large share of slots or gates (DOJ press release, Nov. 12, 2013). The closest direct analogue is the failed JetBlue–Spirit merger remedy: JetBlue and Frontier signed a June 1, 2023 agreement under which JetBlue would transfer all Spirit holdings at LaGuardia to Frontier, mainly six Marine Air Terminal gates and 22 takeoff-and-landing slots, subject to Port Authority and FAA/DOT approvals (JetBlue/Frontier press release, June 1, 2023). I treat those as three direct analogues, not a statistical sample large enough to run a base-rate model. All three favor low-fare or limited-incumbent recipients.

The current slot map reinforces that read. The FAA table below is a full cross-section of all nine operators in the Summer 2025 LGA operator-total report. Units are individual operating authorizations; coverage is the Summer 2025 LGA season; vintage is report timestamp Dec. 9, 2025 at 07:56 with status date “2025 (Current & Future)”; the report excludes FAA-held slots and slots held under five days (FAA Summer 2025 LGA operator totals).

That table pushes Delta far down and American below the low-fare carriers. A transfer to Delta would add capacity to the carrier already operating about half of the listed slots. American has a real strategic motive, and The Points Guy reported that American, Frontier, JetBlue, and Southwest were viewed as leading candidates, but American is still a large incumbent rather than the pro-competition answer regulators usually choose at LaGuardia (The Points Guy, May 28, 2026).

The live regulator signal is unusually direct. FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said the former Spirit LGA slots should go to another low-fare carrier if that serves the public good, and that retirement is an option if they cannot go to such a carrier (AirlineGeeks, May 28, 2026). The governing FAA LGA order matters because trades and leases require written FAA confirmation, the order imposes an 80% use rule, and withdrawn, surrendered, or unassigned operating authorizations can be retired or reallocated by lottery; the current order runs through Oct. 24, 2026 (Federal Register notice via Justia, May 13, 2024). This does not make the auction irrelevant. It means the highest cash bidder must still be an approvable user.

I modeled three structural paths. I put 68% on one main buyer, because the estate is marketing an LGA slot portfolio and Terminal A is closed pending a new tenant while the Port Authority controls its six gates (The Points Guy, May 28, 2026). I put 24% on a split sale or regulator-shaped allocation, because the two strongest LGA precedents used bundles and multiple recipients. I put 8% on retirement, legal delay, or no clear final allocation before the May 2, 2028 annulment date. In the single-buyer branch, my weights are Frontier 47%, Southwest 22%, JetBlue 12%, American 8%, Other 7%, United 2%, Delta 1%, and Alaska 1%. In the split branch, my inclusion probabilities are Frontier 78%, Southwest 55%, JetBlue 42%, Other 42%, American 32%, United 13%, Delta 6%, and Alaska 4%. The formula is $P_i=0.68q_i+0.24r_i$, where $q_i$ is the single-buyer chance and $r_i$ is the chance of appearing in a split allocation.

That produces Frontier at 50.7%. Frontier gets the top number because it is the named buyer in the 2023 agreement for this exact package, it is a closer substitute for Spirit’s ultra-low-cost role, and it starts from only 10 operated LGA slots in the FAA table (JetBlue/Frontier press release, June 1, 2023; FAA Summer 2025 LGA operator totals). Southwest is 28% because it is a durable low-fare buyer with existing LGA operations and a history of receiving LGA remedy slots, but it is not as direct a Spirit replacement (DOJ press release, Nov. 12, 2013; FAA Summer 2025 LGA operator totals). JetBlue is 18% because it has New York relevance and few LGA slots, but DOJ’s successful 2024 challenge to the JetBlue–Spirit merger makes a direct handoff of Spirit assets to JetBlue harder to defend (DOJ, Mar. 4, 2024). Other airline(s) is 15%, mostly Porter or another limited-incumbent/low-fare bidder; TPG flagged Porter as a dark horse because it already serves the New York area and could use U.S. preclearance at Toronto Billy Bishop to support LGA service (The Points Guy, May 28, 2026). American is 13%, United 4%, Delta 2%, and Alaska 1%.

What's non-obvious

The obvious story is “bankruptcy auction, highest bidder wins.” That is too simple. These are operating authorizations inside an FAA capacity order, not ordinary equipment. The bankruptcy estate can seek the best price, but FAA confirmation, DOT/DOJ competition policy, and Port Authority gate control all sit between a bid and durable use at LGA (Federal Register notice via Justia, May 13, 2024; The Points Guy, May 28, 2026). That is why Frontier beats American despite American’s deeper pockets.

The “Other” bucket is not junk. WestJet won one of the 2011 LGA bundles, and Porter already appears in the FAA’s Summer 2025 LGA operator report with six slots (DOT, Aug. 1, 2019 recap; FAA Summer 2025 LGA operator totals). I still keep Other below Frontier and Southwest because a non-U.S. or new-entrant buyer must solve gates, aircraft, route economics, and a compressed approval calendar.

Limitations

No qualified-bidder list, stalking-horse bidder, court sale order, or FAA confirmation is public yet. The key dates are still ahead: June 10 for indications of interest and the procedures hearing, June 30 for final LGA bids, July 9 for the auction, and July 17 for targeted regulatory approvals under the summarized sale procedures (Stretto summary of docket 1117, June 1, 2026). A named stalking-horse bidder would move these probabilities sharply.

The wording remains messy. Public FAA data and current auction reporting say Spirit had 22 individual LGA slots, while some merger-era and secondary sources use “slots,” “slot pairs,” and “daily flights” loosely (FAA Summer 2025 LGA operator totals; The Points Guy, May 28, 2026; JetBlue/Frontier press release, June 1, 2023). I do not think that changes the likely recipients much, but it could change whether the final public report describes 11, 12, 22, or more “slots” depending on the unit used.

The legal tail is real. If the court treats the slots as clean saleable estate assets and the FAA’s role as narrow, American and JetBlue rise. If FAA/DOT or the airport reshape the process around competition or congestion, Frontier, Southwest, Other, and the retirement tail rise.