Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spirit Airlines Is Winding Down All Operations

spiritrestructuring.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 111 posts

Re: Spirit Airlines Is Winding Down All Operations

#81

Post by gucci-on-fleek »

Animats wrote: post #63
pfannkuchen wrote: post #3

> Winding Down > To our Guests: all flights have been cancelled, and customer service is no longer available That seems quite a bit stronger than “winding down”!

Just a few hours ago, Spirit execs were saying everything is just fine. At noon yesterday, Trump was saying that a bailout was still likely. (The first time I read about Trump saying that "we" were going to buy Spirit, I thought he meant him personally, or The Trump Organization. Spirit only needed about $500 million, and Trump could afford that.) That nobody wanted to buy a major airline for $500M means it was a rea…

> Most major airports charge very high parking fees. LAX charges $1000 for the first day, and that goes up to $5000 a day on day four.

That seems pretty cheap to me actually. A random Google search suggests that an airplane costs at least $100MM, so $5k per day is 0.005% of the airplane's value.

Scaled down proportionally to a $100k car, that's only $5 per day, and considering that many parking lots charge $5 per hour, that seems like a pretty good deal.

Re: Spirit Airlines Is Winding Down All Operations

#82

Post by instagib »

Management chased every quarter with little care about the long term future.

Took their profits and ran to other low cost airlines like frontier to make them ultra low cost per friends in the industry.

Spirit tried to merge a few times but failed due to their balance sheets. Then bankruptcy protections.

Follow the price of oil and airlines run into issues during those times when it goes above $100.

Re: Spirit Airlines Is Winding Down All Operations

#83

Post by [deleted] »

Wurdan wrote: post #80
gib444 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> meaning that flights are often longer Got any sources? I found: Europe average flight length (2024): 1,157km [0] USA average flight length (I could only find old data, 2005): 1,110km [1] (even if we index this up based on upward trends, maybe another 150km, that doesn't seem a huge difference to me?) > The US is big And Europe is big too. It's actually a bit bigger than the USA by land size. Btw, IAG is a global ai…

How are you counting average distances? Simply as the distance between two points in the carrier’s network, or are you looking at the lengths of each individual flight? The source for the point I made is a Wendover video - Why Budget Airlines are Suddenly Failing

[deleted]

Re: Spirit Airlines Is Winding Down All Operations

#84

Post by mondocat »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #3

> Winding Down > To our Guests: all flights have been cancelled, and customer service is no longer available That seems quite a bit stronger than “winding down”!

Winding down is an industry term that means not only stopping operations, but liquidating assets, resolving contracts, dealing with employees, etc. So that notice is a step in the winding down process, and it would seem like one of the easier, and earlier ones.

Re: Spirit Airlines Is Winding Down All Operations

#85

Post by avazhi »

Kwpolska wrote: post #74
avazhi wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you didn't know about the war in Iran and the effects it has had on oil and thus jet fuel prices, I'm not sure what you're doing on HN.

The war in Iran was the final nail in the coffin. But they were running out of cash for the past few years. If the Iran situation was so bad by itself, we would surely see other airlines failing now.

Spirit could simply be the first of several; the effects may also be delayed. WGA isn't looking good either, for a number of reasons.

Just because it's the first doesn't mean it will be the only one. It goes without saying but apparently you need to be told that there has to a first here, after all. The war is only 2 months in. Full clarity won't come for 2-3 years. It's likely several airlines will take hits on their balance sheets from this that they won't be able to recover from, but they'll fight or go into hardcore refinance mode or get bailed out before actually going bankrupt, but this will remain the ultimate cause.

Re: Spirit Airlines Is Winding Down All Operations

#86

Post by sys_64738 »

clintonb wrote: post #61

It’s strange to see so many commenters celebrating the death of a company and the loss of so many jobs. I flew Spirit a few times. The first time sucked because it was an emergency and I had no other option. The last few flights were great. We got the large seats up front for $75 extra. That plus parking at SJC was still cheaper than flying Southwest out of OAK. The staff were friendly, and the gate was conveniently…

A company that isn't a going concern should be liquidated immediately. Taxpayer money should not be sunk into something that has no future.

Re: Spirit Airlines Is Winding Down All Operations

#87

Post by orsorna »

Animats wrote: post #63
pfannkuchen wrote: post #3

> Winding Down > To our Guests: all flights have been cancelled, and customer service is no longer available That seems quite a bit stronger than “winding down”!

Just a few hours ago, Spirit execs were saying everything is just fine. At noon yesterday, Trump was saying that a bailout was still likely. (The first time I read about Trump saying that "we" were going to buy Spirit, I thought he meant him personally, or The Trump Organization. Spirit only needed about $500 million, and Trump could afford that.) That nobody wanted to buy a major airline for $500M means it was a rea…

>The first time I read about Trump saying that "we" were going to buy Spirit, I thought he meant him personally

He views the federal government as his assets to use and not the people's, I don't blame your confusion. This philosophy at the highest seat of office is unprecedented in America.

Re: Spirit Airlines Is Winding Down All Operations

#88

Post by stogot »

mondocat wrote: post #84
pfannkuchen wrote: post #3

> Winding Down > To our Guests: all flights have been cancelled, and customer service is no longer available That seems quite a bit stronger than “winding down”!

Winding down is an industry term that means not only stopping operations, but liquidating assets, resolving contracts, dealing with employees, etc. So that notice is a step in the winding down process, and it would seem like one of the easier, and earlier ones.

Winding down would be a ramp down of some cancelled flights slowly but this is all flights cancelled immediately This is a shut down

Re: Spirit Airlines Is Winding Down All Operations

#90

Post by esseph »

gib444 wrote: post #78
Wurdan wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The business model works fundamentally differently in the US and Europe due to geography. The US is big , meaning that flights are often longer, meaning that fuel is a bigger portion of the operating cost. And fuel is essentially something airlines can’t reduce the cost of compared to other operating costs where it might be possible to optimize for greater efficiency.

> meaning that flights are often longer Got any sources? I found: Europe average flight length (2024): 1,157km [0] USA average flight length (I could only find old data, 2005): 1,110km [1] (even if we index this up based on upward trends, maybe another 150km, that doesn't seem a huge difference to me?) > The US is big And Europe is big too. It's actually a bit bigger than the USA by land size. Btw, IAG is a global ai…

You need to look at things like average distance and median distance, do some filtering for most common destinations (example: NYC to LA, San Francisco to Miami, Denver to DC, etc), fuel costs, but also operating costs. Salaries and everything cost much more in the US than they do in Europe.

Cost Per Seat Mile is $0.07 for RyanAir and $0.12 for Spirit, not counting fuel. Spirit hovers around 80% capacity while RyanAir is around 94%.

RyanAir's niche is secondary airports while Spirit was compeating with larger airlines at places like LAX where gate costs are higher.

In 2024 to 2025 there was an engine problem that required Spirit to ground 40% of the fleet to deal with it. Meanwhile they still had to pay for those aircraft with no revenue. This caused a major hit to the financials for a carrier that already runs on thin margins.

I'm sure there's more to it, but these are the larger things I've found.

Post reply on HN