Spirit Airlines Warns It May Not Survive Another Year (businessinsider.com) 66
Spirit Airlines has warned investors that it may go out of business, just months after exiting bankruptcy. From a report: In a quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, it said there was "substantial doubt" over its "ability to continue as a going concern within 12 months." The budget airline said it was harder to make money because of weak demand for domestic leisure travel and "elevated domestic capacity," meaning increased competition on such routes. Spirit reported a net loss of $245.8 million for the second quarter of 2025, up from a $192.9 million loss for the second quarter of 2024.
GOIN UP / TO THE SPIRIT THE SKY (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:GOIN UP / TO THE SPIRIT THE SKY (Score:5, Funny)
I guess service from the mainstream carriers has finally gotten so bad that there's nothing that the budget carriers can cut to treat passengers more shoddily for cheaper prices.
They just need to get more creative. Maybe they need to offer "seats" in the cargo hold, or add a trailer to the back of the plane. They could zip tie a few seats to the wing and sell them as "adventure" or "unobstructed view" seats. They could start taking bets on which part of the plane will fall off mid-flight. So many options!
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Seats in cargo could actually be very desirable under the right circumstances.
Imagine having a big lie flat seat, not sitting elbow to elbow with the asshole next to you, and not having to listen to a bunch of fucktards scattered all around. It could be pretty sweet.
They just need to add heat and let you bring your own drinks and snacks without counting against your luggage allotment.
Re:GOIN UP / TO THE SPIRIT THE SKY (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the mainstream carriers bringing the fight to the budget carriers with "basic economy" fares is a lot of their problem. Many times, "basic economy" is priced similar to Spirit (especially once you factor all the gotcha fees Spirit is known for), but you at least have the infrastructure of a larger airline in case something goes wrong. If a Spirit flight is cancelled, there may not be another flight you can get on anytime soon. If a United flight is cancelled, they can probably find an alternative option to get you there.
Reliability (Score:3)
Spirit is notoriously bad at flying on time. If you don't value your time at all, it might be worth it to save a bit of money, but in my area Delta is the main airline, and I've never been delayed more than half an hour on one of their flights, and that was in a snowstorm. Usually they leave almost exactly on time.
Of the three people I know who have flown Spirit recently, all were delayed significantly, one by almost three hours.
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Actually, the mainstream carriers bringing the fight to the budget carriers with "basic economy" fares is a lot of their problem. Many times, "basic economy" is priced similar to Spirit (especially once you factor all the gotcha fees Spirit is known for), but you at least have the infrastructure of a larger airline in case something goes wrong. If a Spirit flight is cancelled, there may not be another flight you can get on anytime soon. If a United flight is cancelled, they can probably find an alternative option to get you there.
Sadly that is rarely the case these days as even full service carriers are running at insane load factors (LF). Especially on popular routes. BA/Iberia might run dozens of planes between LHR and MAD each day but all of them will be almost full, when you've an average LF of 95 on a route, 95% of seats filled means that one aircraft taken out of commission (I.E. mechanical fault or hit by jetway) means that distributing those passengers over later flights will take 19 flights (180 seats on a BA A320neo at LF9
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I can't speak to the European situation, but in the U.S. you can usually get around this with a connection. Direct flights later that day may be full, but there is probably some connecting flight that can get you there.
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I've never ridden on Spirit specifically because of its reputation but I think we all might end up missing the downward pressure it puts on airline ticket pricing if it goes away.
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I've flown on Spirit many times and every bad thing you've heard about it is true.
Re: GOIN UP / TO THE SPIRIT THE SKY (Score:2)
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Yup. Honestly, I would pay $500 to fly on Delta before I would take a free seat on Spirit, Ryan Air, Frontier and the like. Their reputation is just that bad.
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These assholes charge $80-100 for a single checked bag. Their seats are honestly some of the worst I ever sat on IN ANY CIRCUMSTANCE, distanced so close to the seats surrounding yours that you will have aches and pains for the rest of the day that you flew with them. They are the bottom of the barrel shit hole airline, and people only need to fly with them once to realize they never want to do it again.
They are killing themselves
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The opposite. It isn't the airline amenity/service level at all. I think it's that most people can't afford travel any more because of rampant consumer price increases compounding for the past several years. Sure, you might be able to afford to cheaply fly to Orlando on Spirit, but once you're there, you can't afford $1500 for hotel, restaurants, and entertainment tickets.
15-30 years ago the airfare was often the "luxury" prohibitive expense on a vacation. The plane ride might cost 300-500 bucks, but you co
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That's the problem. Other companies have offered cheaper prices and that's created competition for budget carriers. Consumers want and demand the worst possible (reads: cheapest) experience, and now they can get that anywhere.
Why is this even here? (Score:2, Insightful)
There is no technology angle to this, not even "AI", just a business failing to make enough money to go on.
Who cares?
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Sure an airplane qualifies, but TFA is about the financials of a company that doesn't make, improve or even maintain airplanes, it just leases them and hires third parties to fly them around.
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Spirit should shove AI into their planes to attract gullible investors.
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If a 'full service' airline really wanted to prostitute themselves, they'd offer in flight announcements to join their Mile High club.
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Agree, slashdot is flying towards irrelevance.
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Well, there are some really bad comedy skits on YouTube that feature Spirit. But, beyond that, no, I can't think of anything tech-related about it. And that includes their aircraft.
Um, plane nerds? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not my particular nerd fandom but I certainly respect it.
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There's always a twit who can't stand the fact that Slashdot caters to a diverse body of nerds and not their narrow focus of personal interests. It's nice to see at least some things never change on Slashdot.
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And then comment "why is this here" on every single one, which drives a 20-post-long thread arguing back and forth of how it's technically relevant, which shows the algorithm that there's more engagement on the topic, which leads it to accept more similar submissions. It's like people still don't understand how the Internet works.
Oh, every damn time without fail. It's a bonified part of Slashdot forum culture. A kind of annoying part but a bit charming in its own way given the guarantee of it happening.
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There is no technology angle to this, not even "AI", just a business failing to make enough money to go on.
Who cares?
News for merd? Nope
Stuff that matters? Yes
For usoans at least.
Also, we bussiness nerds (Electronics engineer with an MBA here) find fascinationg how two failed mergers, one in '22 to "protect the company" and one in '23 blocked by the DoJ to "protect low fares" will lead to the biggest companies of the market getting Spirits' assets for pennies (or should it be nickels ;-) ) on the dollar
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Slashdot isn't "news for tech heads", it's "news for nerds". There are "plane nerds" out there too. We discuss airlines constantly here that have no tech angle.
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I do. This is interesting news.
Re: Why is this even here? (Score:2)
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The first airline to actually use an electronic boarding pass was actually the Japanese ANA back in 2005 or thereabouts. I know because I used them.
The first US airline to adopt them thing was, apparently, Continental fully two years later: https://archive.ph/0uIzG [archive.ph]
So, yeah, your example is bullshit and electronic boarding passes have nothing to do with Spirit.
Doom Loop (Score:2)
The going concern warning is required under various financial reporting rules, but it can be a self-fulfilling prophesy in an industry like this. Why would anybody buy a ticket on Spirit more than a few weeks out when there's a risk the airline goes under before the plane flies and you end up as an unsecured creditor? Even worse, you could end up getting the outbound segment and then being stranded before the plane returns if the airline ceases operations.
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The going concern warning is required under various financial reporting rules, but it can be a self-fulfilling prophesy in an industry like this. Why would anybody buy a ticket on Spirit more than a few weeks out when there's a risk the airline goes under before the plane flies and you end up as an unsecured creditor? Even worse, you could end up getting the outbound segment and then being stranded before the plane returns if the airline ceases operations.
I think all the major credit card networks allow you to file a dispute for 120 days from the expected delivery date, which for an airline ticket, would presumably be the date of your flight. Even if you treat it as 120 days from the purchase date, you still should be safe booking up to four months out.
So no, you won't be the unsecured creditor. VISA/Mastercard/AmEx will be.
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Won't make you whole if it leaves you stranded and having to buy a last-minute ticket on another airline.
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Yeah, as a country we're projected to lose over $12 billion in easy money this year alone because of this drop in foreign tourism but who cares when you're a xenophobic asshole, right?
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Sure we'll survive, it's just stupid to do things that costs oneself such large amounts of easy money to no benefit. Isn't one of Trump's big promises a prosperous America? Chasing away that kind of money isnt really working towards that goal. Particularly given we generally weren't having the problems a small number of nations are currently having with tourism.
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Areas like Europe that have established histories and something historical to visit are far more deserving of visitors than what we can o
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History has shown that economies based on tourism aren't stable.
While tourism can be fickle, Covid showed the risk of relying too much on it, it can still be a healthy significant long term income source to countries that activity market it and and follow through with a positive experience, starting with getting through the airport on arrival.
In the past the USA has benefited from the indirect marketing from it entertainment industry, but that can no longer offset the negative PR from the new cycles and directly from the mouth of trump.
tourist destinations around the world have had it with tourists
No, while a few countries are h
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Gotcha, your entire support for this comes from your xenophobic thing with tourists.
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oh that's gonna be off by orders of magnitude.
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Oh, I didn't cite my source there for that 12 bil. Here ya go https://wttc.org/news/us-econo... [wttc.org]
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This [youtube.com] works in multiple languages. I'm tempted to bring one whenever I go shopping at Costco.
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Hmm. I wonder why the other US carriers are moving capacity from international routes to domestic? Maybe because the rest of the world doesn't want to visit your shithole country anymore? 'Merica First!
It might have something to do with increasing terrorism, crime, and protests in cities that Americans would have visited on vacations in the past. Take Paris as an example. I can read in the news about protests in the city about this or that. I can recall French farmers blocking traffic with their tractors to make a point, and dumping manure in front of public buildings to make their point stick around for a bit after they leave. There's been reports of blond haired women warned not to enter parts of th
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Where in the world would Americans want to go?
Try New Zealand, while not perfect it is pretty safe and people from the USA are still welcome, well most of them, trump can just fuck off.
You will find there are less flights as less people from NZ want to go to the USA. Also most flights from NZ to the UK stopped at LA for refueling but that was a problematic stop as passengers were forced through USA immigration, just get back in the same plane without leaving the airport. In the past that was simply seen as unpleasant waste of time. Now many see i
Spirit/Ryanair lower prices (Score:2)
I have a solution (Score:1)
Credit Cards (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing the budget airlines have encountered is that the big airlines these days make most of their money hawking credit cards. The budget airlines try this too, but their more limited destination roster makes it much harder to compete with the Big 3 airlines on credit card setups, and their relative lack of heft means they don't get as good of a deal with the financial institutions on the cards they do sell.
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No you're applying a very specific Americanism to this. Airlines still make most of their money flying people around. United and Delta make most of their money hawking credit cards, and they are about the only two airlines among the many hundreds in the world that do so.
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No you're applying a very specific Americanism to this. Airlines still make most of their money flying people around. United and Delta make most of their money hawking credit cards, and they are about the only two airlines among the many hundreds in the world that do so.
It's not just America, although they are front and centre in it. It's also becoming popular in Asia and Australia as various airlines get branded cards. Australia has been doing it for years with QANTAS and Virgin branded cards.
It's not popular in the EU/UK because we've limited the merchant interchange fees so that branded cards aren't really profitable. As there is a limit on what can be charged to the merchant for accepting a card in the EU and UK, there is considerably less to share with a co-brand s
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The story is about the American air travel market though. United, Delta, and American just happen to be the dominant airlines in the U.S., and all are heavily dependent on credit card revenue. Southwest (the fourth largest) has decided that it has to get in on the game or perish- it has strategically abandoned the low-cost carrier model that it has followed since its founding. And they've done that because low-cost carriers have trouble selling co-branded credit cards.
And nothing of value was lost (Score:2)
I mean, it's Spirit. Their value to the society is a net negative.
Good riddance (Score:2)
Does anyone care? (Score:2)
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The editors fly Spirit, maybe?
It's a guess. I know someone who used to work at Spirit in their IT department (QA in particular). After working there for a while, he emphatically told me to fly any other airline.
It's worse than it seems, for all airlines (Score:2)
If you have kept up with the news about near miss or even the different collisions at airports in the USA, many people just don't feel safe flying, no matter what the airline is. Do you drive 9-12 hours, or do you risk getting on a plane here in the USA? For me, I'd much rather drive than get on a plane these days, because it is safer.
Sure, fire a bunch of people involved in air transportation, then "hire them back". What could possibly go wrong, other than people not wanting to go back to a high stres
Two merger attempts failed (Score:2)
On Feb '22, frontier wanted to merge with Spirit, Spirit shareholders rejected the offer.
JetBlue Tried to acquire Spirit in '23 but the DoJ blocked the merger.
Now, the company will go bust, and the bigUns (American, delta, et al) will get all the assets from pennies on the dollar.
Great way to protect prices by the DoJ, and great way to protect your company shareholders...
Mergers sometimes are the lesser of two evils
I flew Spirit once... (Score:2)
...and there will never be a twice. It was terrible and I really didn't save much of anything over other carriers after all the add-ons were charged. I feel bad for the people that are employed there but will not miss them one iota.
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100% agree. Unfortunately, too many of the other airlines are trying desperately to copy Spirit's "nickel and dime customers to death" model.
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I flew twice but that was because I made the mistake of booking a round trip.
Nice! (Score:2)
If there's anything we can do to help push them over the edge, lets do it.
Never tried them but (Score:2)