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Let's Buy Spirit Air

letsbuyspiritair.com

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Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#341

Post by RugnirViking »

Symbiote wrote: post #300
thrownthatway wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

ive never experienced that on ryanair? I fly it pretty regularly, its just the food cart, and even that feels halfhearted, I see maybe 3% of customers actually getting something, so most of the time they dont even bother asking, just roll right on by unless you go out of your way to ask for something.

The only bad upsell they do is in the booking process. Are you sure you don't want a hire car?

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#342

Post by fundatus »

cromka wrote: post #288
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.…

And then you have RyanAir in Europe with no credit card or loyalty program offerings. They did have a loyalty subscription program, but it cost more than it generated. Best not to generalize.

And Ryanair is the largest airline in Europe! And one of the largest in the world.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#343

Post by danelski »

ho_schi wrote: post #333

Reading from Wikipedia Spirit sounds like a horrible low-cost Airline like Ryanair. Why should we rescue something which hurts employees and passengers? If it would be TWA or PanAm my reaction would be positive.

Many people, myself included, will gladly be 'hurt' on a 2-3 hour flight, if that means we can save some noticeable amount of money on the fare.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#344

Post by danelski »

reddalo wrote: post #301
ivraatiems wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ryanair is the best performing budget airline in Europe and they only buy new planes, because it's way cheaper to run them. Less time on land for maintenance = less wasted money.

OK, but are you able to put an order on 100+ brand-new hauls if you're just starting out without the enormous capital to back you?

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#345

Post by MagicMoonlight »

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.…

Bullshit. Very few airlines even have points systems.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#346

Post by kelnos »

miki123211 wrote: post #340
thrownthatway wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ryanair (EU) also does this, but the US is indeed pretty obnoxious here. United even has commercials before the safety video; combined with the "if you're watching explicit content on this flight, please mind the children" announcement, those flights onestly honestly felt pretty surreal to me.

United has gotten worse and worse with this. The ads after (not before) the safety video, and also before each movie you watch (and it's usually the same ads before every movie). A few years ago the ads were skippable, but not anymore.

The flight attendant also makes an announcement about the United-branded credit cards near the beginning of the flight.

But this is really just an illustration of what the top-poster of this thread said: flying people places doesn't make enough money, so they have to pursue other revenue streams.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#348

Post by card_zero »

achierius wrote: post #310
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.

> We should just naturally have the natural things that we naturally want, supplied by pixies. Is this how you see roads? Are we entitled for wanting those to be paid for by the state? What about the police? Should we have to pay whenever a police officer stops a mugging -- or is the wage of that officer, too, supplied by pixies?

These have remained unresolved questions, for me, for decades. When an internet pal was trying to found a libertarian (what noun should I use) locale, in Awdal in Somaliland (that detail of whether it was really in Somaliland or not was more debatable at the time), he first founded the Awdal Roads Company.

https://web.archive.org/web/20040603010444/http://awdal.com/...

So obviously there are theories about how these things can be privately funded. But I can never remember the theories. Looking at that link, it was going to be toll roads. People dislike this, understandably. One problem with private roads is that you can't exactly use a competing road, which might entail moving house, or changing your plans for the day, or your job.

I have a vague notion that roads could be funded by a group of businesses that benefit from them, sort of like the W3C or a mall. Non-profit, sponsored roads, or something. (Now I'm thinking of runestones, several of which are near bridges and say "He made this bridge for his soul" or a similar statement.)

Don't ask me about police, I don't even understand crime and punishment, really.

I should maybe add that I meant "We should just naturally have the natural things that we naturally want" somewhat unironically. I feel that way, the same as anyone else. The difficulty, as observed up the thread, is in working out what's natural, or vital, or wanted and feasible. There are no pixies to magically know the answers, to my regret, only governments, and they only pretend to know. By buying and selling we can almost figure out the answers, contingently and approximately, but a lot goes wrong with that, including the friction of having to do it all the time, and "rent-seeking", whatever defines that really.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#349

Post by roryirvine »

rob74 wrote: post #332
Symbiote wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, Ryanair is the undisputed leader in finding new creative ways to take advantage of their captive audience and saving a few pennies here and there (e.g. I'm not aware of other low-cost carriers that have advertising on the overhead bins or put the safety instructions on seat-back stickers because it's marginally cheaper than using cards for that). Not to mention only flying from airports in the middle of nowhere…

They don't have to actually sell a single scratchcard for it to be worthwhile for them - the whole point is to cheapen the experience.

They have an entire theory of marketing based on people believing that "if it feels cheap, it is cheap", and so they deliberately build in a bunch of annoyances (scratchcards, arbitrary baggage restrictions, checkout hoop-jumping, endless PR about removing toilets or running standing-only flights) which serve to make their service seem as cheap and nasty as possible.

And it works: some people simply ignore the nasty aspects, others are willing to put up with them in order to get a bargain, and yet others actually take pride in wading through the crap - usually expressing it in "I beat the system" terms. And here we are talking about it on a barely-related thread - carrying their marketing message further!

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#350

Post by wallst07 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #226
gruez wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"They have much better minimums that North America"

Can you enumerate these? As far as I'm aware Ryan Air is basically more "Spirit" than Spirit Airlines.

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