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 clear favorite: I give it a 58.9% chance to get at least one former Spirit LGA slot pair. The next live outcomes are a split or negotiated allocation that gives slots to Other airline(s), JetBlue, Southwest, or American. Delta, United, and Alaska are long shots because the binding constraint is FAA and Port Authority approval, not cash.

Context

Spirit says it began an orderly wind-down on May 2, 2026, cancelled all flights, and no longer had customer service operating (Spirit restructuring site). Spirit's May 27, 2026 bankruptcy motion put the LGA slots on a fast sale track, with final bids due June 30, 2026 at 4:00 p.m. ET, an auction on July 9, 2026, and required regulatory approvals or consents by July 17, 2026 (Spirit bidding-procedures motion). As of the June 28, 2026 forecast time, the bid list and winner were not public.

LGA remains slot-controlled. The FAA's June 23, 2026 order keeps LGA operating limits in force until October 28, 2028, keeps 71 scheduled operating authorizations per hour, and requires FAA written confirmation for trades or leases (Federal Register LGA order). The Port Authority has a separate gate and terminal veto point: it told the bankruptcy court on June 9, 2026 that FAA runway slots alone do not let an airline board and deplane passengers, and that any bidder must solve Terminal A, Marine Air Terminal, lease and cure issues (Port Authority court filing).

Evidence

The historical backbone points toward a low-cost or limited-incumbent recipient, not a pure highest-dollar legacy-carrier sale. In the 2011 Delta-US Airways slot swap, DOT allowed Delta to receive 132 daily LGA slot pairs from US Airways, but only after divestitures whose bidders had to hold less than 5% of slots at the relevant airport; JetBlue and WestJet won the divested LGA bundles (DOT 2011 slot-swap release). In the 2013 American-US Airways merger settlement, DOJ required divestiture of 34 LGA slots and related airport facilities to low-cost carriers to improve competition (DOJ 2013 settlement release). The closest bankruptcy analogue is ATA: Southwest agreed in November 2008 to pay $7.5 million for 14 LGA slots, subject to bankruptcy-court approval, and used that deal to enter LaGuardia (Travel Weekly ATA/Southwest report). These precedents show that bankrupt-airline LGA slots can be sold, but the public-interest and competition filter is real.

The live 2026 process has the same filter. Spirit's bidding procedures let the estate select the highest or otherwise best bid, combine partial bids, and weigh speed and certainty of closing, not only cash price (Spirit bidding-procedures motion). FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford said on May 28, 2026 that the FAA and DOT would support the slots going to a low-fare airline and that retirement was an alternative if that did not happen (AirlineGeeks report on Bedford remarks). Bloomberg Law reported on June 17, 2026 that the Port Authority wanted redistribution based on competition, access, and underserved markets, and that bankruptcy lawyers saw regulatory certainty as part of the best-bid test (Bloomberg Law sale-process report).

The key official slot snapshot is Summer 2025, run by FAA in December 2025, with units as individual LGA slots or operating authorizations, excluding FAA-held slots and slots held less than five days (FAA Summer 2025 holder totals, FAA Summer 2025 operator totals).

That table is the core reason Delta and American are capped. Delta is already the largest LGA operator by a wide margin, American is second, and Spirit's 22 slots are big enough to matter more to Frontier, JetBlue, Southwest, Porter, Allegiant, or another smaller carrier than to Delta (FAA Summer 2025 operator totals). The holder/operator difference also matters: Alaska held 12 slots but was not listed as a regular LGA operator in the FAA operator table, which makes a new Alaska bid less likely than a bid from a carrier already operating flights there (FAA Summer 2025 holder totals).

Frontier has the strongest positive signal. In June 2023, JetBlue and Frontier signed a definitive agreement under which Frontier would take all of Spirit's LGA holdings if JetBlue's Spirit merger closed: six Marine Air Terminal gates and 22 takeoff and landing slots, subject to Port Authority and FAA/DOT approval (JetBlue/Frontier 2023 divestiture agreement). Reuters reported on May 5, 2026 that Frontier expected to absorb significant demand after Spirit's shutdown, that Spirit had been Frontier's fiercest competitor on more than 100 overlapping routes, and that Frontier was considering Spirit assets while staying disciplined (Reuters via Investing.com). Frontier had $974 million of total liquidity as of March 31, 2026, so an $80 million to $90 million slot package is affordable but not trivial for it (Frontier Q1 2026 results, TPG LGA-slot report). I read that as a high close-probability bid if Frontier decides the Terminal A costs are acceptable.

JetBlue, Southwest, American, and Other airline(s) are the next tier. JetBlue told Bloomberg Law it was evaluating LGA opportunities but was mindful of New York-area costs, and Skift reported on June 17, 2026 that JetBlue was shrinking in Newark and LaGuardia while building Fort Lauderdale after Spirit's collapse (Bloomberg Law sale-process report, Skift JetBlue strategy report). Southwest has the ATA precedent (Travel Weekly ATA/Southwest report) and enough liquidity, with $3.3 billion of cash and cash equivalents plus a $1.5 billion revolving credit line at the end of Q1 2026, but it already has a mid-sized LGA footprint and no direct public LGA-slot bid signal (Southwest Q1 2026 results). American can pay, with $10.8 billion of available liquidity at March 31, 2026, and TPG reported that American was viewed as one of the leading candidates, but its 327 LGA slots make it a weak fit for the FAA and Port Authority competition narrative (American Q1 2026 results, TPG LGA-slot report). Other airline(s) is live because Bloomberg Law reported that Porter was interested in more LGA slots and that the Port Authority named Allegiant, Frontier, El Al, Arkia, and Etihad as airlines interested in expanding or entering Port Authority airport markets (Bloomberg Law sale-process report).

My scenario tree has four paths. I put 60% on one FAA-approved buyer taking most or all of the package, 27% on a split or negotiated allocation, 8% on FAA/Port Authority recapture followed by a lottery or policy allocation, and 5% on retirement, litigation, or no clear final allocation by May 2, 2028. Within the single-buyer path, Frontier gets most of the weight because it is the only carrier with a prior agreement for this exact package and the best regulatory story. Within the split and regulatory paths, Other airline(s), JetBlue, and Southwest gain share because the threshold is only one former Spirit slot pair. The resulting at-least-one-slot probabilities are Frontier 58.9%, Other airline(s) 23%, JetBlue 21%, Southwest 16%, American 12%, United 4%, Delta 2%, and Alaska 2%.

What's non-obvious

The obvious story is that the richest bidder buys the slots. That is the wrong frame. Spirit's procedures explicitly require evidence of regulatory approvals and closing certainty, the FAA must approve LGA trades or leases in writing, and the Port Authority is asserting facility-control rights over Terminal A (Spirit bidding-procedures motion, Federal Register LGA order, Port Authority court filing). A higher American or Delta bid can lose if it looks hard to confirm, and a lower Frontier bid can win if it is clean for FAA, DOT, and the airport.

The second missed point is that the exact Frontier package already had a dry run. The 2023 JetBlue/Frontier divestiture agreement covered the same six Marine Air Terminal gates and 22 Spirit LGA slots, and it was framed as preserving ultra-low-cost access in New York (JetBlue/Frontier 2023 divestiture agreement). That does not guarantee a 2026 bid, but it is stronger evidence than generic interest from a large incumbent.

Limitations

The biggest gap is the sealed bid field. The final LGA bid deadline is June 30, 2026 at 4:00 p.m. ET, and the auction is scheduled for July 9, 2026, so the decisive bid prices, partial-bid structures, and any Terminal A side deal are still unknown at the June 28, 2026 forecast time (Spirit bidding-procedures motion).

The second gap is the legal interface between FAA operating authority and Port Authority facilities. The Port Authority says a buyer must handle Terminal A lease and cure issues, while Spirit says it is working with relevant federal authorities, and that disagreement can change both price and winner (TPG Port Authority report, Port Authority court filing).

The last gap is wording. Official FAA reports and most coverage describe Spirit as holding 22 individual LGA slots or operating authorizations, while the question uses slot pairs; TPG translates the 22 slots into roughly 12 daily flights because a round trip needs separate takeoff and landing rights (FAA Summer 2025 holder totals, TPG LGA-slot report). I treated the resolution as control of any usable former-Spirit LGA round-trip authority, not a literal 22 pairs.