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Let's Buy Spirit Air

letsbuyspiritair.com

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Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#191

Post by fcarraldo »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #176
gorgoiler wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more fair assessment would be: company runs a utility => they need to be a regulated utility! The core part of air travel doesn’t really feel any different to a bus or metro or train. Off the tarmac then yes it absolutely feels like a Verizon store, as does some of the in-flight service, but there’s always been this weird feeling as a traveler that every carrier is basically the same thing but with different decals…

Have you ever flown spirit or any of the other ultra low cost carriers? It very much is a different experience than flying a legacy domestic mainline carrier. I’m not alone amongst people i know who will happily fly the cheap seats on United/Delta/AA but won’t even look at a ticket from Spirit or Frontier even at a significant discount. Compare it to a flag carrier like Singapore air and it is a shockingly different…

Singapore Air is majority government owned and is closer to having “utility” airlines than not.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#192

Post by missedthecue »

rapatel0 wrote: post #48

Fundamental problem: Flights don't make money. Airlines actually make all of their money through loyalty programs and credit card payments. They basically should have turned into regulated utilities long ago, but loyalty program revenue saved them. Unless this initiative will turn into a credit card company (which nobody likes or wants to do) it won't go anywhere Private equity will likely sell the company for parts.…

Ryanair moves the most passengers of any airline in the world and doesn't have any cobranded credit cards or loyalty program.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#193

Post by Petersipoi »

addandsubtract wrote: post #131
gordon_freeman wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Flights don't make money. Airlines actually make all of their money through loyalty programs and credit card payments." If that's the case then how RyanAir survived and is thriving?

Not to mention that loyalty programs and credit card bonuses don't exist in Europe.

This isn't true. European airlines do have loyalty programs with "miles".

Air France, British Airways, Finnair, Turkish Airlines, just to name a few, all have miles programs.

They just aren't tied to credit cards because the EU caps interchange fees to 0.3%, so there simply isn't enough money to have a meaningful credit card point system.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#194

Post by tbrownaw »

antoniojtorres wrote: post #22

Random side note. Why do many of these (presumably) LLM stamped out sites have the same aesthetic where they all need a pulsating indicator at the top as if to indicate some sort of urgency aesthetic?

But without a sense of urgency the marks might stop to think first.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#195

Post by kennywinker »

jmalicki wrote: post #138
mysecretaccount wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with your uncharitable framing I agree with both quotes.

Can you educate the rest of us by explaining your reasoning?

The extremes of capitalism have a negative impact on people’s lives.

The first scenario it harms us by under-serving and scammy practices, the second scenario it’s over-extractive and funneling money from the many to the few.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#196

Post by missedthecue »

hedora wrote: post #188
4k0hz wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airlines were heavily regulated in the US and essentially operated as government contractors until 1978 [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Aeronautics_Board

As I understand it, everything about the industry was better back then too. Case in point: Old Perry Mason shows where characters regularly drive to the airport, pay for a ticket and get on a plane. Flying was actually faster than driving back then, even when measured by time between deciding to leave and arriving at destination! (Yes, tickets used to cost a bit more. Whatever. Figure in the price for camping in the…

"Yes, tickets used to cost a bit more"

Tickets used to cost 4-8x what they cost now, depending on route. It wasn't a couple percent extra. A lot of what made flying seem like such a glamorous activity was that everyone but the upper classes was excluded.

An economy class round trip from the US to Japan in the 1970s with Pan-Am was $8,900 in 2026 dollars. About $15,000 if you flew first class.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#197

Post by kennywinker »

throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #172
jmalicki wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you educate the rest of us by explaining your reasoning?

Breaking down complex topics into binary black and white doesnt have to be wrong. The more important part is, how much wealth they extracted and how exactly. Was it market dominance with a superior product or amoral cost externalization. The angle of treating transportation as regulated utility shifts the business focus away from profit onto providing services, which sometimes can cost more than your income. Similarl…

Utilities and transportation should be public services, and they are in many places. Sometimes it works well, other times it works less well… usually because the capitalists lobby it into neglect and then say “see it’s not working / losing money let the private sector take over”.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#198

Post by card_zero »

roxolotl wrote: post #177
jmalicki wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you educate the rest of us by explaining your reasoning?

Not op but I also agree with the framing assuming you add “and they provide a vital service” to both. If a vital service is being used to extract profits it should be regulated so that equal access to the vital service can be provided. If a vital service is being provided but cannot make money it should be regulated so that it can be sustained since it is vital. Now what is vital? Is Spirit vital? That’s the hard to…

1. "We want to have this, but we don't want to pay for it!"

2. "We won't pay for this, but we still want to have it!"

These are of course both fair points. Why should we "pay for" things, what's that all about? We should just naturally have the natural things that we naturally want, supplied by pixies.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#199

Post by zaptheimpaler »

smackeyacky wrote: post #157
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #51

Awesome, I hope we see a lot more of this. Co-ops do work, REI is one, Modo is another and we could have many more. Over and over again companies are slowly destroyed by extractive shareholders or PE firms, the current structure of a public company is not the only possible shape.

https://youtu.be/GbIimta-TJs?si=3Sm-Dgl8DtfubFSt A period documentary about the Meridian Triumph motorcycles co op. Sad, thoughtful take on a particular bit of British manufacturing history. That the co op started with a strike, had to trade exclusively with a single customer, and that the senior workers became the managers they hated. Due to the structure of that co op there was no way for them to access the capital…

Thanks I will watch it, looks interesting. But i would say there's also a million documentaries, movies, news reports, examples and more about insane, evil, stupid shit that goes on in various corporations or how organizations turn to shit when acquired by PE as well. We know for example that cigarette companies knew their products caused cancer and other health problems for decades(!) while denying it publicly, and this is the bar regulators expect today - that they will do absolutely anything including letting people die through smoking or pollution or blocking access to healthcare to make a profit. So a co-op going poorly doesn't invalidate the concept.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#200

Post by tbrownaw »

lefrenchy wrote: post #93

Can someone help me understand the argument that the FTC blocking the merger was bad? The argument I have seen is that blocking it resulted in Spirit dying and people losing their jobs and there being less competition. Wouldn’t the same exact thing have happened regardless? Am i supposed to believe that Jet Blue would have kept all of those employees? There would be one less competitor anyway, and in the merger case…

A merger would be more orderly, especially if overall capacity only needed to go down by part of what's in the chunk being cut out.
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