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United Airlines adds flights to target the main markets of Spirit Airlines, which has gone bankrupt

United Airlines rushed on Thursday to take advantage of the financial woes of rival Spirit Airlines, boosting its presence in major markets for the bankrupt discount airline, including Fort Lauderdale Orlando and Las Vegas.

Spirit Airlines has shrunk its operations, and withdrawn from several markets. This has created an opportunity for competitors.

Frontier Group launched flights last week to Spirit's strongestholds.

Patrick Quayle is United's Senior Vice President of Global Network Planning and Alliances. He said: "If Spirit suddenly went out of business, that would be an incredibly disruptive event. We're adding the flights so their customers have other options, if they need or want them."

United Airlines will begin selling tickets for 15 new cities where Spirit operates on Thursday. The Chicago-based carrier said it would fly larger aircraft from Chicago to New York LaGuardia in order to assist customers who are not located near its hubs with connecting to newly added flights.

Tom Fitzgerald, TD Cowen's analyst, wrote earlier this week that "we expect these carriers will continue to benefit from Spirit’s retrenchment despite their less overlap." Reporting by Nathan Gomes, Bengaluru; and Rajesh K. Singh, Chicago. Editing by Shailesh. Kuber. Sriraj Kalluvila. Shinjini Ganguli.

(source: Reuters)