Budget carrier Spirit Airlines will stop its flights between Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Grand Cayman in April, just a few months after the service was launched.
The airline, which has previously operated flights to Grand Cayman, restarted a three-times-a-week service to Owen Roberts International Airport in December, but well-documented financial struggles have forced it to make drastic cuts to its route network.
The airline, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August 2025, announced last month that it had reached a restructuring agreement with its creditors and as part of that agreement, it would be aligning its network and capacity to routes and periods of strongest consumer demand.
Routes cancelled
According to industry publication Aeroroutes, Spirit is cancelling its service to Grand Cayman from 13 April. Spirit is also cancelling other international routes from Fort Lauderdale to Managua, Nicaragua, and San Salvador, El Salvador.
Spirit revealed it was launching the new service to Grand Cayman in August last year, just before filing for Chapter 11, with a statement from John Kirby, then-vice president of Spirit Airline’s network planning division, saying, “Grand Cayman is a dream destination, and we look forward to offering our guests new, affordable travel options to reach this island paradise.”
One month after Spirit announced the route, JetBlue announced similar three-times-weekly direct flight service between Ft. Lauderdale and Grand Cayman.
The first Spirit flight from Ft. Lauderdale to Grand Cayman arrived 4 Dec., the same day JetBlue’s service from the Florida city commenced.
The Cayman Islands Department of Tourism (CIDOT) said, “We are disappointed in this loss of capacity, but we understand that it is a business decision and is part of the carrier’s wider reduction of international routes.”
It added it was “confident in the resilience of Cayman’s aviation sector” and the CIDOT team was currently exploring new and enhanced route opportunities for the Cayman Islands.
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It seems strange that a “Budget carrier” like Spirit would think that they had the clientele for a “definitely not budget” Cayman Islands.
Decisions like this is why they are in severe financial difficulty.