Westmoreland County Airport officials said Spirit Airlines will resume flights from Arnold Palmer Regional Airport near Latrobe to Orlando later this year.
The discount flyer previously announced earlier this year it would indefinitely halt service to the popular Florida destination in favor of seasonal flights to Myrtle Beach, S.C.
“I’m not sure of the exact dates, but Spirit just told us Orlando is scheduled to come back,” Monzo said Friday.
Spirit spokesman Thomas Fletcher confirmed Orlando flights from Arnold Palmer Regional Airport will return on Sept. 10 and operate four times a week. Outbound flights are scheduled daily from Thursday through Monday, Fletcher said.
Orlando service will be on hiatus for the next five months, meaning it will be a week of transition for Arnold Palmer Regional Airport.
Spirit Airlines, the Unity airport’s lone commercial carrier, for now will make i’s last scheduled flight from Westmoreland County to Orlando early Tuesday evening.
Four days later, on April 17, the discount flyer will begin its seasonal service to Myrtle Beach, a route that will operate five times a week through the fall.
Spirit’s Orlando route has been the centerpiece of operations for the Palmer Airport and at times over the last several years has operated daily flights there along with seasonal service to other Florida cities including Fort Lauderdale, Tampa and Fort Myers.
The Orlando flights have been the only destination served from Latrobe since November as Spirit continues to cutback back its operations as the company works to emerge from a second bankruptcy. The temporary elimination of Orlando flights from Palmer airport has intensified efforts with local officials to find a new carrier to operate from Westmoreland County.
Monzo, who is slated to retire at the end of April, said last month talks were ongoing with multiple prospective airlines and said a deal was within reach. Late last week he said those talks have stalled because of outside factors such as higher fuel costs that impact the airline industry’s bottom line.
“There’s been no further movement as far as that is concerned,” Monzo said of a potential deal with new commercial carriers at the airport.
The uncertainty over the airport’s future comes as the number of passengers who went through the gates last year fell to its lowest level since Spirit began commercial service from Westmoreland County in 2011. The airport reported it had just 119,379 passengers went through the gates in 2025.
A record high of more than 355,000 passengers traveled through the Palmer airport in 2015 and totals still reached nearly more than 243,000 travelers as recently as 2022.
Meanwhile, construction of a $22 million expansion project to double the airport’s passenger terminal remains on pace to open in mid-June.