I speak with a lot of people at Spirit Airlines, mostly in maintenance and TechOps. I find them l extremely qualified, highly professional and caring.
The airline is safe!
You may hate its ULCC business plan but make no mistake, it is run by professionals.
Yes, it is struggling financially because in the words of the WSJ, “it had too few airport gates, pilots and planes to compete effectively.”
The one thing the newspaper didn’t mention, and this is a big detail that is under-reported, the “too few planes issue” was exasperated by the A320-NEO fiasco which forced the airline it to ground 50 of them.
Think about it; 25% of the fleet is grounded yet the $3B of debt remains thus triggering the sale of another 20 airplanes to raise cash. With 33% of the fleet now G-O-N-E the death spiral begins.
One must also mention the SAVE / JBLU merger…
I don’t know how that would have worked out in the end, but it would have been better than what Spirit has now.
To that regard I won’t mince words, the idiotic ruling from the DOJ was just that – idiotic.
So…
I commend the employees at Spirit who have worked hard. Operating an airline is tough.
Operating a ULCC is really tough.
