The administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Bryan Bedford, has suggested that coveted takeoff and landing slots once owned by Spirit Airlines at LaGuardia International Airport should go to another low-cost carrier or be forfeited.
LaGuardia is one of only three slot-controlled airports in the United States, meaning that airlines can’t just simply start a new service to and from the airport, but must first obtain a pair of so-called ‘slots’ denoting specific takeoff and landing times.
Slots are used at airports where capacity is so constrained that allowing unregulated growth would, in the FAA’s words, create “regular and significant flight delays,” and infrastructure improvements to increase capacity is not feasible in the near term.
The FAA officially calls slot-controlled airports Level 3 facilities, and along with LaGuardia (LGA), the only two other Level 3 airports in the U.S. are New York JFK and Washington Reagan National Airport (DCA).
According to the DOT’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics, as recently as January 2026, Spirit Airlines was utilising 18 slot pairs at LaGuardia per day, but these have not been utilised by any airline since the ultra-low-cost carrier went into liquidation in the early hours of May 2.
Slot allocations at LaGuardia generally take place once per year, and airlines have to bid to acquire a slot or slots. There are a variety of factors considered in this allocation system, including historical slot usage and a minimum slot usage agreement.
This kind of allocation process can sometimes favor airlines that already have a significant presence at an airport, but Bedford has suggested that the FAA will prioritize a low-cost airline in its allocation process of the Spirit slots.
“As long as the slots are going to a low-fare airline and for the public good, the FAA and DOT would support that,” Bedford commented on Thursday, suggesting that if a low-cost airline doesn’t come forward to claim the slots, he would rather see the slots forfeited in order to relieve congestion at LaGuardia.
Which airlines Bedford considers to be low-cost carriers is, however, open to debate. The obvious choice would be Frontier Airlines, which currently only holds seven take-off and landing slots at LaGuardia.
Southwest Airlines could also arguably be considered a low-cost airline and already holds around 34 slots at LaGuardia.
Spirit Airlines failed after racking up huge losses during a second Chapter 11 bankruptcy process that had seen the Florida-based carrier try to shrink back to profitability.
At the start of this year, Spirit bosses were increasingly confident that the airline would be able to emerge from the Chapter 11 process, but spiralling fuel costs following the joint U.S. and Israeli military offensive in Iran threw Spirit’s plans off course.
Assumptions that the airline had made about its operating costs quickly became obsolete, and the airline desperately needed another massive funding injection to keep flying.
Spirit Airlines approached the Trump administration in a last-ditch bid to secure a government bailout, but talks broke down after an agreement couldn’t be reached between White House lawyers and Spirit’s lessors.
