Spirit Airlines added daily flights from Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Las Vegas to its schedule Wednesday. The company celebrated the occasion by awarding a lucky passenger two free round-trip tickets and a hotel stay.

"We've been looking at it for a long time," Spirit Airlines Vice President of Network Planning, John Kirby, told KOB4. "We’ve seen the growth in the marketplace. A lot of people are moving here. A lot of people want to vacation here as well, and the surrounding areas. We thought this was a great time, we probably would have been here sooner if not for the pandemic."

Following their Vegas landing, passengers can connect to over 40 locations, and they can return to Albuquerque from any of them, KOB4 reported.

“We view Albuquerque as a destination as well, people who want the great outdoors," Kirby said. "And that’s become even more prevalent post-pandemic, so we’re very excited about the traffic both in and out of Albuquerque.”

Albuquerque International Sunport officials view the Spirit Airlines addition as a sign of returning to normalcy following the COVID-19 pandemic. Spirit Airlines is set to be the Sunport's eighth airline.

“We’ve got New Mexicans that are wanting to travel, and we’ve got lots of people that are wanting to travel to New Mexico, so we’re only going to go up from here," said Sunport Development Manager, Lisa Leyva.

“Anytime we have more flights and more competition or routes, then that drives down prices, it creates more of the demand that we want in order to keep prices where we’d like to see them," she told KOB4.