Airlines to Break Records at PIT this Summer

Several airlines are expected to offer a record number of seats at Pittsburgh International Airport this summer—a sign that carriers continue to see Pittsburgh as a strong market for air travel.

In July, at least five carriers will break a record for their monthly capacity offerings at PIT, which includes “bidirectional seats” – a combination of arriving and departing flights and the number of seats offered within them:

• Southwest Airlines will operate nearly 298,000 bidirectional seats in July, the most it has ever offered in a month at Pittsburgh since starting service in 2005. It is also the most monthly seats currently offered by any airline at PIT.
• American Airlines will offer nearly 262,000 seats for the month, the highest the airline has offered in Pittsburgh since its merger with US Airways in 2013.
• Spirit Airlines will offer more than 144,000 bidirectional seats during the month, its highest since entering the Pittsburgh market in 2017.
• Frontier Airlines will fly nearly 49,000 bidirectional seats at PIT, its most since returning to the area in 2016.
• Breeze Airways is scheduled to operate nearly 29,000 seats, its largest amount of monthly capacity since beginning service at PIT in 2021.

How are the airlines adding all this capacity?

“They’re adding new routes and bringing bigger aircraft on current routes,” said Joe Rotterdam, director of Air Service Development at PIT. “And for many of our carriers, they’re scheduled to fly more passengers this summer than they have since 2019.”

Frontier and Spirit, for example, each serve more destinations from PIT than in 2019, with many of the routes added post-pandemic. Spirit has added nonstop service to Newark, Miami, New York-LaGuardia, Boston and Houston-Intercontinental. Frontier recently tripled its network with new service to Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia and Raleigh-Durham beginning last month.

Breeze, which began service at PIT to four cities in 2021, has been one of the airport’s fastest-growing airlines. It now serves 12 total cities with San Diego, i