Live data from Hacker News

Let's Buy Spirit Air

letsbuyspiritair.com

291–300 of 628 posts

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#291

I am not sure what the site intends to do, but doesn’t spirit have eight billion in debt with about one billion in payments due immediately. The planes and other assets belong to the debt holders. Unless this site plans to raise a couple of billion, I don’t think they are buying any airline .

[deleted]

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#292
post #219
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

Yeah and it was an absurdly expensive activity limited to rich people

And most families only had a single car prior to 1980.

What's your point?

Did airlines get cheaper due to deregulation or because technology and engineering made operating them cheaper?

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#293

I could easily afford any of their competitors but I always picked Spirit airlines. The pricing makes sense, pay more if you need more things. I liked Spirit because it was more akin to riding the bus, I got treated well every time by their staff and the experience was fairly consistent. Other airlines also have cramped sits, what little they did better than Spirit isn't worth the price, and the experience was incons…

>I shop at walmart compared to whole foods and other "better" chains for similar reasons. "great value" as walmart's motto goes, it isn't about the price, it's about the value you get for what you pay for. Spirit was the "great value" airline.

Yeah it's not a secret that you can get by in life on the cheap if you have cheap, trashy tastes.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The two main differences are more armchair lawyering required to avoid fees (legacy carrier is often not going to put your bag in the dimension bin, but the Spirits and Frontiers of the world certainly will) and having to sit through three sales pitches instead of one on the legacy airlines. I think Delta is the only legacy carrier in the States that doesn't do obnoxious sales pitches - only the food cart upsell. Rya…

I haven’t actively surveyed all the airlines, but I happened to notice recently that United charges for carry-ons.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The two main differences are more armchair lawyering required to avoid fees (legacy carrier is often not going to put your bag in the dimension bin, but the Spirits and Frontiers of the world certainly will) and having to sit through three sales pitches instead of one on the legacy airlines. I think Delta is the only legacy carrier in the States that doesn't do obnoxious sales pitches - only the food cart upsell. Rya…

> having to sit through three sales pitches instead of one

I’m not from the US and have never flown any of the airlines being discussed here.

I’ve never heard of this, is there some YouTube videos you can point me to.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#296

I could easily afford any of their competitors but I always picked Spirit airlines. The pricing makes sense, pay more if you need more things. I liked Spirit because it was more akin to riding the bus, I got treated well every time by their staff and the experience was fairly consistent. Other airlines also have cramped sits, what little they did better than Spirit isn't worth the price, and the experience was incons…

Spirit seemed to enjoy making their customers hate them. everyone who liked Spirit had to explain themselves (like you did) because their reputation was awful. It was a trainwreck of a brand.

As an European who's lived in the US, Spirit was actually just as "good" as Ryanair. Sure, you can hate on both of them, but they're cheap and moce you from place to place. I can endure any discomfort for 3h if it meant I could save 100 or 150 bucks flying from NYC to Miami/FLL in high season.

I had much worse experiences with Frontier and promised myself never to fly them again. On one occasion we had to wait for 2h on the plane on tarmac after landing at MacArthur airport because... the airport staff was not responding to pilots' calls. Somehow they didn't know the plane was landing. It was 1 AM or so and while it might not have been Frontier's fault, to not be able to sort it out for 2 hours was telling. Had other issues, too, this one was most ridiculous.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#297
post #85

Sorry, why would I invest in a failed airline with an anonymous collective with no defined leadership? How could it do anything but fail?

It's almost always better to create a new airline ex-nihilo as you get brand new planes, which are better than older ones.

This is almost exactly the opposite of what most new airlines do. The fastest, cheapest way to get a good plane is to buy an old plane from an existing airline (preferably one going out of business, so you get a deal) and renovate it a little.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#298

> The only thing missing is ownership that answers to the people — not to shareholders. Noble, but this will fail. Why would anyone do this? No incentive. These sorts of initiatives forget the toil of actually operating a business. You might as well get more pledges given that you'd have more control and the same profit share. It will regress to the same as the status quo.

Co-ops don't exist at all, right?

This really doesn't feel like a Co-op to me.

It sounds more like a credit union. (first $5 goes to your ownership share / vote, and the rest of your money goes to your account).

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evidence? Isn't the state the expression of the people's will? That's the theory of democracy, isn't it? Also, any evidence or reason to believe that an extraction-based capitalist model is more aligned with customer interests (where the customer is the thing value is extracted from, and where corporate leadership salaries are directly tied to how much they can grift from the customers) than a government where the in…

> Isn't the state the expression of the people's will? Just recently HN discussed the „ban anonymity on the internet“ initiatives of various governments and who was behind it because nobody wants that. Certainly not the citizens.

The issue is that citizens issue ambiguous wills. They don't want kids to be able to look at porn, they don't want hate speech online, they don't want to be IDed online. Politicians try to square those competing wills.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two main differences are more armchair lawyering required to avoid fees (legacy carrier is often not going to put your bag in the dimension bin, but the Spirits and Frontiers of the world certainly will) and having to sit through three sales pitches instead of one on the legacy airlines. I think Delta is the only legacy carrier in the States that doesn't do obnoxious sales pitches - only the food cart upsell. Rya…

> having to sit through three sales pitches instead of one I’m not from the US and have never flown any of the airlines being discussed here. I’ve never heard of this, is there some YouTube videos you can point me to.

I can't find videos.

The cabin crew stand at the front of the plane, and either play a recording or make an announcement saying you can buy a lottery scratchcard for €2 or whatever, with some of the money going to charity. They then walk down the plane "scratchards? scratchcards?"

They repeat this with a collection for charity (no scratchcard), a promoted drink, and some sort of food.

I think this is mostly unique to Ryanair (in Europe), I don't remember Wizz Air, Norwegian or EasyJet doing this. Part of Ryanair's marketing is to make the experience worse than it needs to be, so you know you're saving money.

Post reply on HN