Spirit Airlines-Fort Lauderdale to Armenia

[Ricardo]

Spirit Air has applied to the US DOT to begin flights in summer of 2009 from Ft. Lauderdale to Armenia:

http://www.spiritair.com/PressReleaseDetails.aspx?number=20081219

This really surprised me since Armenia is not even one of the 10 largest cities in Colombia (ranked 16th by one source I found on the internet.) My best guess is they want to access the coffee country market and chose Armenia because COPA is already flying into Pereira, and Manizales is known for having an airport that is often inaccessible due to weather.

[Tinto]

Ricardo,

Thanks for the tip on Spirit's potential new direct flights. I'm surprised too that they chose Armenia over Pereira because they would have taken all the business away from COPA since they don't have a direct flight. In fact, when I recently did a search on COPA's web site they had two stops, one in Panama City and another in Bogota before arriving in Pereira.

I think it is just a matter of time that Pereira will be getting a direct flight though from the States.