Another airline announces five more nonstop flights soon to San Diego

Spirit Airlines, which currently flies nonstop to just three cities from San Diego International Airport, is preparing to start flying to five more cities, just in time for summer travel.

The low-cost carrier announced this week that in April, May and June it will begin nonstop service to Baltimore, Houston, Portland, Sacramento and Salt Lake City. All will be daily flights, although service will initially be three times weekly in Baltimore starting May 9 and moving to daily service on May 21.

Sacramento will make its debut on April 10, followed by Houston on May 8, Baltimore a day later, Portland on June 5, and finally Salt Lake City on June 20.

Spirit already flies to Oakland, Las Vegas and San Jose.

Given Spirit's long-standing presence in San Diego, the additional flights made sense, said John Kirby, Spirit Airlines' vice president of network planning.

“We're always looking for new opportunities to take our guests where they want to go at affordable prices, and this expansion provides San Diego travelers with convenient flights to discover five new destinations from coast to coast,” Kirby said. “Spirit has served the San Diego community for a long time, and we are excited to expand this summer and make it easier for guests across our network to visit the ‘Hometown of California’ and connect with family and friends.”

Most new destinations already have relatively strong service from other airlines. Salt Lake City is served by Southwest, Delta and Alaska Airlines, and there are multiple flights each day to Sacramento via Southwest and Alaska, according to San Diego Airport spokesman Nicole Hall. United Airlines is currently the only carrier offering nonstop service to Houston, and Southwest is the only carrier offering nonstop service between San Diego and Baltimore. Both Southwest and Alaska fly nonstop to Portland.

For each nonstop flight, excluding Sacramento, current daily ridership ranges from 300 to 690 passengers each way, Hall said. For Sacramento, the average daily ridership each way is 1,500.

Starting next month, low-cost carrier Breeze Airways will make its debut at San Diego Airport with the first of five new nonstop flights to major cities in North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Frontier Airlines will launch a seasonal nonstop flight between San Diego and El Paso on May 16.

Spirit's announcement of the expanded service comes less than a month after Spirit and JetBlue announced they were ending their merger agreement, weeks after a federal judge blocked the deal.