Spirit, Frontier, 3 Other Low-Cost Carriers Form ‘Association of Value Airlines’

The biggest low-fare airlines in the U.S. are banding together in an association that’s meant to defend their interests. Allegiant Air, Avelo Airlines, Frontier Airlines, Spirit Airlines, and Sun Country Airlines have formed the Association of Value Airlines, or AVA, which isn’t a commercial partnership. For now, it’s mostly a group lobbying for public policy that helps its member airlines.

Let’s look at what this group does.

What the Low-Fare Airlines’ New Association Does

The airlines announced their association with a post on LinkedIn and a website, FlyAVA.org. According to the post’s headline, “A New Era Takes Flight” in commercial aviation with the launch of the group, but passengers won’t see any immediate changes because of it. That’s because AVA isn’t an alliance like Oneworld, SkyTeam, and Star Alliance; it’s not even a codesharing, where airlines put their 2-letter code on one another’s flights.

In its own words, AVA is “a new Washington, D.C.-based trade association” formed to “champion affordability, access, and consumer choice in U.S. air travel.” It wants to “serve as a united, independent voice for the low-fare airline sector before Congress, the Executive Branch, and state governments.”

Reading between the lines of the statement, it’s easy to see that Spirit, Frontier, Allegiant, Sun Country, and Avelo — in order of passengers carried — are getting together to lobby for more favorable policy because, taken by themselves, they don’t have the sway the mainline carriers enjoy in Washington.

Even the smallest of the legacy carriers by number of passengers, United Airlines, is almost double the size of the entire AVA membership. The ultra-low-cost sector, which is what most people call value airlines, was hit hard by the pandemic and by the introduction of basic economy by mainline carriers.

That’s a big reason for the trouble the biggest member of the group, Spirit, is in: It recently emerged from bankruptcy protection after losing $1.2 billion in 2024. The second-biggest, Frontier, eked out $85 million in net income after years of losses. Frontier has been trying, unsuccessfully, to achieve a bigger scale by merging with Spirit.

The group noted, correctly, that its members help the public by “stimulating competition when they enter new markets, driving down prices across the board.” The members’ business model is under threat, they believe, from factors including “outdated regulations” and “inefficiencies in the U.S. air traffic control system.”

To lobby for policies that help them, the AVA members have hired a former Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) official from the first Trump administration, Chris Brown. The other top official it has already hired is Tiana Huey, a former air traffic controller, who will be based at the FAA Command Center.

Final Thoughts

As a passenger, the creation of the Association of Value Airlines won’t have an immediate impact on your travels. Whichever of the group’s members — Avelo, Allegiant, Frontier, Spirit, and Sun Country — you fly, the new group won’t result in a different way to book, board, or earn miles from your flights. What will happen, instead, is that those airlines will get a collective voice in Washington that they didn’t have before.