Frontier Airlines Enters South America for the First Time With Three New Orlando-Colombia Routes

• Orlando–Medellín (MDE): begins December 10, 2026, operating daily. Introductory one-way fares start at $169.
• Orlando–Bogotá (BOG): begins December 14, 2026, operating six times weekly before increasing to daily service on March 6, 2027. Introductory one-way fares start at $99.
• Orlando–Cartagena (CTG): begins December 19, 2026, operating once weekly. Introductory one-way fares start at $129.

The promotional fares must be purchased by September 16, 2026, for travel between January 14 and April 5, 2027, with blackout dates from March 23–30, 2027, according to Frontier's own release. The carrier has not publicly specified which aircraft type will be assigned to the routes, though Frontier's release describes its fleet broadly as "one of the youngest and most fuel-efficient" in the United States, built around Airbus A320-family jets.

Lance Lyttle, CEO of the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, welcomed the expansion: "Expanding airline options on these routes gives travelers more choice, strengthens our connectivity with Colombia, and reflects the strong demand for affordable international travel between Central Florida and South America."

Filling the gap Spirit left behind

The timing and routing are not a coincidence. Spirit Airlines, which entered its second bankruptcy and shut down operations in May 2026, had for years been the dominant low-fare option between Orlando and Colombia. Spirit flew nonstop from Orlando to both Bogotá and Medellín before it stopped flying altogether, while its Orlando–Cartagena route had already been discontinued back in February 2025, according to reporting on the route history.

That exit left a measurable hole in capacity. Industry schedule data cited in coverage of the announcement shows airlines offered just 61,220 two-way seats between Orlando and Colombia in August 2026 — a 14.8% drop from the 71,852 seats available in the same market a year earlier. Frontier's three new routes are a direct attempt to recapture that lost capacity, and to do so with Spirit's former low-fare positioning rather than compete head-on with the full-service carriers already flying the market.

Who else flies the market

Frontier will not have Orlando–Colombia to itself. Avianca and LATAM Airlines Group already operate service on parts of the route network: Avianca supplies roughly 30,960 seats in the market and is currently the only carrier flying nonstop between Orlando and Medellín, while LATAM contributes about 19,100 seats on its own Orlando services, according to the same capacity data. Both of those legacy carriers connect Orlando to Bogotá and Medellín already.

Cartagena is where Frontier is carving out clearer new ground: once its weekly flight begins on December 19, Frontier will be the only airline connecting Orlando and Cartagena nonstop, a market neither Avianca nor LATAM currently serves from that airport.

The move also continues a broader pattern for Frontier this year of picking off routes vacated by Spirit across its network, part of what one report characterized as Frontier pursuing dozens of new routes aimed squarely at absorbing Spirit's former customer base following the airline's collapse.

Part of a broader international build-out

Colombia is the newest piece of a network expansion Frontier has been pursuing aggressively for more than a year. In late 2025, the carrier announced 22 new routes launching across the United States, the Caribbean and Latin America, adding destinations in Guatemala and Honduras alongside a debut at Providenciales International Airport in the Turks and Caicos and a return to Nassau, the Bahamas. That was followed in early 2026 by 23 more US and Mexico routes, including new domestic-to-Cancun service from Charlotte, Chicago Midway and Raleigh-Durham, with introductory fares as low as $39.

Until this announcement, however, Frontier's international map stopped at Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean — the airline had never operated scheduled flights anywhere in South America. The Colombia launch therefore extends Frontier's reach further south than it has ever flown, and signals that the carrier sees continued room to grow into markets vacated or underserved following Spirit's shutdown, rather than pulling back to consolidate its existing network.

Why Colombia, and why now

The timing lines up with strong underlying demand. Colombia's international tourism arrivals have been growing quickly, with visitor numbers approaching six million in 2026 and international travel to the country up more than 16% year over year in early 2026, driven in part by visitors from the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Spain and Panama, according to tourism-industry tracking of the market. Medellín in particular has drawn international attention as a travel destination, with visitor arrivals to the city estimated to have grown by more than 17% this year, while Bogotá has separately been ranked highly in travel-authenticity surveys based on visitor reviews.

Roughly 311 weekly direct flights already connect Colombian cities including Bogotá, Medellín, Barranquilla, Cartagena and Pereira to US hub airports such as Miami, New York, Houston, Atlanta and Dallas, reflecting how large the existing US-Colombia travel market already is even before Frontier's entry. Orlando, notably, is not among the currently dominant US gateways for Colombian traffic in the way Miami is — which is part of what makes the capacity gap left by Spirit's collapse there significant for a leisure-and-theme-park market that skews toward price-sensitive travelers exactly like Frontier's target customer.

Context: an airline in transition

The Colombia launch comes at a moment of change atop Frontier's parent company. Longtime CEO Barry Biffle — who had personally run VivaColombia, a Medellín-based carrier, earlier in his career — was replaced in December 2025 by the company's president, according to prior reporting on the leadership change. Frontier has not tied the Colombia announcement to any specific executive commentary beyond the airport authority's statement, and the carrier's release did not include remarks attributed to its current CEO.

Frontier's push into Colombia also lands alongside separate scrutiny of the airline's loyalty and fare-tier changes domestically this year, though those changes are unrelated to the new international routes and involve different parts of Frontier's business model.

What it means for travelers

For Orlando-based travelers, the new routes restore nonstop options to three major Colombian cities that had become harder to reach affordably since Spirit's exit. The introductory fares — as low as $99 one-way to Bogotá — undercut typical legacy-carrier pricing on the same city pairs, continuing Frontier's ultra-low-cost model of low headline fares paired with a la carte pricing for bags, seat selection and other extras.

The reduced frequency on Cartagena (once weekly) and the phased ramp-up on Bogotá (six times weekly before going daily in March) suggest Frontier is testing demand carefully rather than committing to a full network build-out immediately. Whether the carrier adds further Colombian destinations, additional US gateway cities, or increases frequency will likely depend on how bookings materialize once the initial promotional fare window closes.

The expansion is Frontier's first scheduled service anywhere in South America, marking a genuine network milestone for a carrier that has historically concentrated its international flying on Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

The ultra-low-cost calculus

Frontier's move also illustrates how ultra-low-cost carriers approach international expansion differently than full-service airlines. Rather than building a hub-and-spoke long-haul network, Frontier is targeting specific, underserved point-to-point city pairs where a legacy or regional gap has opened up — in this case, a gap created by a competitor's bankruptcy rather than by Frontier displacing an incumbent through fare competition alone. The approach mirrors how the carrier has expanded across Mexico and Central America in recent years: identify markets with strong leisure and diaspora travel demand, enter with narrowbody Airbus equipment already in the fleet, and use deeply discounted introductory fares to build initial load factors before settling into standard pricing.

That strategy carries risk. Weekly service, as Frontier plans initially for Cartagena, is a relatively low-commitment way to test a market without the fixed costs of daily flying, and it gives the airline an easy off-ramp if bookings underperform. The step-up plan for Bogotá — six weekly flights growing to daily only in March 2027 — similarly reflects a cautious ramp rather than a full-throated launch, consistent with an airline whose broader 2026 guidance, per its own SEC disclosures, has emphasized cost discipline alongside growth.

Whether Frontier's Colombia bet pays off will likely become clearer only after the introductory fare window closes on September 16 and the carrier reports how forward bookings for the December launch dates are trending, information that typically surfaces in the airline's subsequent quarterly earnings calls rather than in route announcements themselves.

Sources

• Frontier Announces Major International Expansion With First-Ever Service to Colombia — Frontier Airlines Newsroom
• Frontier Targets Orlando-Colombia Gap Left By Spirit — Aviation Week
• Frontier to launch three new international flights on former Spirit routes — FlightGlobal
• Frontier adds 3 former Spirit routes to South America — The Points Guy
• Frontier Airlines announces new nonstop flights from Orlando to Colombia — Click Orlando (WKMG)
• Frontier Airlines replaces longtime CEO Barry Biffle with carrier's president — CNBC