Frontier announced on September 10 that it's launching its first-ever flights to South America — three nonstop routes from Orlando to Colombia, starting as low as $99. Sounds like a splashy expansion. It's actually a leaner, more calculated move: Frontier is stepping into exactly the gap Spirit Airlines left behind when it shut down for good in May, and the cheap fares on offer right now come with a very short shelf life.

What Frontier Actually Announced

Starting this December, Frontier will fly nonstop from Orlando (MCO) to three Colombian cities: Medellín (daily, starting December 10), Bogotá (six times a week initially, going daily by March 2027), and Cartagena (once a week, starting December 19). Frontier is calling it its first-ever service to South America, and pointing to "strong, unmet demand for low-cost travel" between Orlando and Colombia as the reason.

The introductory fares — $99 to Bogotá, $129 to Cartagena, $169 to Medellín — are real, but they're bait with a deadline: you have to book by September 16 at 11:59 p.m. ET, and the fares are only valid for travel between January 14 and April 5, 2027, blacked out for the week around spring break.

This Isn't a New Bet — It's Spirit's Old Route Map

Frontier's press release doesn't mention this part, but the routes aren't a coincidence. Spirit flew nonstop from Orlando to both Bogotá and Medellín right up until it ceased operations in May 2026 (Cartagena had already been cut from Spirit's schedule back in February 2025). Multiple aviation trade outlets, including FlightGlobal and Aviation Week, have independently confirmed Frontier is filling the exact hole Spirit left in that market.

That matters because it's the same pattern that's played out across the ultra-low-cost carrier world all year: Spirit collapses, and the surviving budget airlines don't build genuinely new markets so much as they carve up the wreckage. Fewer ULCCs chasing the same routes means less of the fare competition that made those routes cheap to begin with.

What It Means for Your Wallet and Your Miles

Short term, this is good news if you can actually use one of those launch fares — $99 nonstop to Bogotá is a legitimately great price, and it's worth grabbing before the September 16 deadline if South America is on your radar for early 2027. Frontier Miles also gets a new redemption footprint into a market it didn't previously serve, for what that's worth on a program that's never been generous with award availability.

Longer term, don't expect $99 fares to be the norm on these routes once the launch promotion clears. With Spirit gone and Frontier now effectively the only ULCC on Orlando-Colombia, there's less pressure to keep fares low once the introductory window closes and demand settles into a normal pattern. This is exactly the kind of route where fare creep shows up first — not because Frontier is doing anything shady, but because there's simply no one left to undercut.

The Bottom Line

Book the launch fare if you want it, but don't mistake this for permanent pricing. Watch what Bogotá and Medellín cost in March once the promo fares are gone and the daily schedule is fully up — that's the real test of whether this route survives as a good deal or just a good launch.

Confirmed directly on Frontier's own newsroom (news.flyfrontier.com), with route-history context corroborated by FlightGlobal and Aviation Week reporting on Spirit's prior Orlando-Colombia service.