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Let's Buy Spirit Air

letsbuyspiritair.com

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Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#131

Post by addandsubtract »

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?

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

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#132

Post by BoorishBears »

I was looking into Spirit's bankruptcy(s) and it's really fascinating.

One of the creditors that piloted their exit from the first bankruptcy also provided on $80M out of a $270M line of credit secured by assets Spirit needed to survive (an RCF was backed by their right to take-off and land at LGA amoungst other thinfs)

1 week before the 2nd bankruptcy, Spirit drew against the entirety of that line of credit.

During the 2nd bankruptcy, besides rolling large amounts the debt owed to them from the 1st bankruptcy (so Spirit would need to pay it back before other creditors), they had the proceeds of plane sales go towards... interest payments on their RCF and paying back additional financing from the 2nd bankruptcy.

The creditors leading the 2nd bankruptcy also sold the lease to Spirit's largest hangar on April 2nd, but did a similar thing again: instead of the cash going towards operations, it went to the creditors who'd led both bankruptcies.

-

Seeing as they refused the government's bailout, I'm guessing this is doomed as well, but interesting stuff for a non-finance person

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#134

Post by AlexandrB »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #120
Teever wrote: post #17

I'm not American and I've never flown Spirit Air so can someone explain where all the loyalty to this airline is coming from? Like isn't this another big corp biting the dust?

I am American and it baffles me as well. Spirit was one of the worst possible choices for flying, where every little thing was an upcharge. Why people willingly submitted to that insanity I will never understand.

They often had the cheapest fares. That's basically the reason for all the shitty upcharges in the airline industry. Many folks don't care enough about that kind of thing to pay more for a flight on a different airline.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#135

Post by ajross »

striking wrote: post #110
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.

Because the amount anyone would actually pay is substantially below cost for most routes, but it's still a service that many people depend on (either directly or by the indirect economic impact of travel). It's a genuine force multiplier that is unaffordable without being subsidized; making it a utility would just shift the subsidy from credit card points programs to the government.

> the amount anyone would actually pay is [...]

That's.... like a pretty shocking erasure of the idea of a demand curve given the forum here.

To be glib: no, that's not how it works. Increase the price and fewer people will fly, but the demand won't drop to zero. Decrease it and you make less money per ticket but the size of the market is bigger. At some point there is a local maximum, to which the market seeks.

But conditions change occasionally and the equivalent supply curve is moving rapidly because of the oil shock (i.e. it's more expensive to put planes in the air to service tickets you already sold). And things like the mess with Spirit are what happens when the market readjusts: the rest of the industry will (probably) backfill some of the lost capacity, but not all of it, and prices will (probably) rise a bit to a new equilibrium.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#137

Post by addandsubtract »

grahamnorton39 wrote: post #113
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?

Or the thing where they have a bombastic display of numbers, rehashing either emphatically trivial information, or information presented elsewhere, as if they’re the most important figures in the universe. e.g. > *0* hedge fund owners. Zero or including the date Spirit collapsed (despite already mentioning it earlier on the page!). Why not also include “*6* letters in ‘Spirit’” while you’re at it?

Templates need to be filled. Breaking template rules requires actual thinking.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#138

Post by jmalicki »

mysecretaccount wrote: post #125
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!"

Even with your uncharitable framing I agree with both quotes.

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

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#139

Post by burnt-resistor »

If business people couldn't run it as a business, what hope do a bunch of random fools on the internet have?

Plus, it's a carbon-polluting business that props up dirty, corrupt petrochem industries and regimes.

Let it die.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#140

Post by burnt-resistor »

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.

LLMs make time-sensitive frauds easier and faster to stand up to take money from idiots.

I'm surprised they don't also include a team page with a bunch of ChatGPT-generated photographs of fresh-faced fake people to really sell it.

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