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Let's Buy Spirit Air

letsbuyspiritair.com

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Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#221

Post by [deleted] »

tshaddox wrote: post #184
dghlsakjg wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’ve flown Spirit and Frontier several times, and Southwest many times (I know they’re not quite in the same category, especially after their recent changes). I genuinely don’t know what you’re referring to regarding the experience being wildly different. Other than a few quirks about what they do and don’t charge for and how they board and assign seats, I feel like there’s almost no meaningful difference between the…

[deleted]

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#222

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

fcarraldo wrote: post #191
dghlsakjg wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Conversely, Air India was majority government owned, did a pretty bad job of it, and is now privately owned.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#223

Post by tt24 »

ajkjk wrote: post #66
wat10000 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the industry is extremely efficient. Why would we want to turn this into regulated utilities?

sounds like it's not efficient at all? it's barely functional as a business and is only surviving on grifty addons?

Good? It’s dirt cheap

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#224

Post by rhplus »

oceanplexian wrote: post #147
whazor wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both Southwest, but also Ryanair are profitable. Totally possible to make money off flights. But you have to follow the same model: use cheaper airports, a single modern aircraft type to simplify operations, high turnaround speed, charge a lot for extras.

It’s not enough to “make a profit”. Southwest has 30B in assets and makes $441M in profit. Like most airlines it’s a miracle of modern economics and should practically be considered a charity or a nonprofit. You would make more in treasuries or corporate bonds.

Wow… at 1.5% annual return wouldn’t they be better off just renting those assets (aircraft) to other airlines?!

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#225

Post by card_zero »

sailfast wrote: post #211
card_zero wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think they're both actually "We want to have this, but we don't want to pay too much for it just so a CEO can make 10,000x their workers and potentially ALSO still lose money."

Right, but what makes that viable? Something so topheavy ought to go the way of the Irish elk.

Edit: maybe a piñata is a better metaphor. :(

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#226

Post by throwaway2037 »

gruez wrote: post #102
gizmo686 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does any of this imply they should become a regulated utility? This seems like a textbook case of the free market pushing prices down to cost. Having alternative revenue streams pushed that minimal price down; but even without that, there is no reason to think the market would have done anything other than push prices to the lowest level possible in that environment as well.

Company makes too much money: "they're extracting monopolist rents! They need to be a regulated utility!" Company makes too little money: "there's no money in this industry! They need to be a regulated utility!"

I like the EU model. The regulators set a "bare minimum" set of requirements. They have much better minimums that North America, and the fares are (still) cheaper per kilometer travelled. Also, I love the penalty system when flights are late.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#227

Post by altmanaltman »

gordon_freeman wrote: post #75
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.…

> "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?

Because their social media strategy is fire

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#228

Post by bhhaskin »

tech234a wrote: post #20
corvad wrote: post #5

I get the idea but this seems very much something not credible, like who's behind it, what are the guarantees, etc.

It seems to be an Instagram user: https://www.instagram.com/spiritair2.0/ and his own account is https://www.instagram.com/hitherehunter/

Sounds like someone is selling securities without a license tbh.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#229

Post by nunez »

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.…

They make a lot of money from loyalty programs and credit cards, but the legacy airlines do make money on flying alone. The margin they make on that is razor thin, but they do make money from the core product.

Spirit was designed to be ultra low cost, which attracts flyers that are much more price sensitive. Higher Jet A costs means higher ticket prices, which means lost customers, which means lost revenue. Pulling a JetBlue and adding higher tier product offerings to attract the business travelers that _actually_ makes money for airlines would've required an overhaul of their entire business, which they couldn't afford to do.

I agree that Spirit will be chopped up by whoever buys them. It happened to Braniff, PanAm, and a whole bunch of other airlines that weren't thrown a lifeline.

(JetBlue tried to acquire Spirit to prevent this outcome, but the acquisition didn't pass antitrust. Everyone knew that that acquisiton failing was a death sentence to Spirit, but it was what it was.)

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