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Let's Buy Spirit Air

letsbuyspiritair.com

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Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#521

Post by jodrellblank »

exabrial wrote: post #126
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.…

Sadly only expensive because the unions bleed the companies dry.

When CEOs and shareholders take all the money out of a company while doing none of the work, you think it's fine. When workers do the work and get the money, you think it's "bleeding the company dry".

Unions are one of the more effective ways for workers to fight back against "divide and conquer". Unions work to slightly adress the massive power imbalance between employer and employee; that's why the wealthy hate them and spread negative propaganda about them.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#522

Post by jollyllama »

tt24 wrote: post #500
jollyllama wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that, but flying economy was much better back then. Less fights, more legroom. You've got to fly business today to get close.

Yeah and economy class was absurdly expensive and limited to rich people

I'd contend that inflation adjusted, the average flyer won out.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#523

Post by antasvara »

miki123211 wrote: post #338
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.…

This is like saying that movie theaters make money on popcorn, so they should just start selling popcorn and exit the movie business entirely. The reason those loyalty programs work is because of the flights. For a much deeper dive on this, see https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/gary-leff-fre... (there's a well-formatted text transcript)

I read it more as "you buy an airline because you want to run an airline, but what you actually end up running is primarily a credit card company." That doesn't mean you stop doing flights, it just means that the part you want to do is the part that loses your company money.

This sort of thing all the time when (for example) a movie lover opens a movie theater. Running a profitable movie theater is a lot less about movies and a lot more about maximizing concession revenue.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#524

Post by rapatel0 »

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.

When I lived in europe, RyanAir made most of it's money in the terminal. This is why every RyanAir terminal has a maze like exit from security (ikea-esque) before you get to the actual terminal.

The RyanAir CEO was even quoted that he expected some tickets to be come "zero-fare" Link: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/nov/22/ryanair-fli...

The point stands, airlines don't make money on flights. Flights are loss leaders.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#525

Post by joeblogsmomma »

Tiktok weirdo doing this for clout and popularity feel for the people and families effected by spirit shutting down, the communities and local economies. Why can't people donate directly to those who need then pledge "theoretical money" for clicks.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#526

Post by reillyse »

virgilp wrote: post #352
rob74 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I kinda' like Ryanair as lowcost airline? They're fairly efficient (boarding, serving etc), they _actually fly_ the advertised flights (with relatively few exceptions), and the food is reasonably priced. During COVID they would just give your money back, no shenanigans like "they're in our company wallet". Sure they have their quirks but they don't seem to go out of their way to deceive you, they're pretty open about…

Ryanair have been regulated into compliance very effectively by the European authorities- everyone knows they are scumbags and make sure they don’t get away with nonsense.

Literally how regulators should work. They look at the outrageous things they try to do and make laws to prevent them. It’s worked very well and also hasn’t ended Ryanair (which is the usual anti regulation argument , that we can’t have cheap things with regulations).

I personally never fly Ryanair because I’ve had to sue them (and won) in the past, they really do suck.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#527

Post by xmlblog »

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…

This. Maybe there's a market opportunity for people who want to be treated like cattle, but even Spirit couldn't find it.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#528

Post by Boss0565 »

skarz wrote: post #513

Is this real? I examined to their source code and found an exposed TypeScript RPC which indicates the following: totalMembers: 4954 totalPledged: 5678872 averagePledge: 1146.320549 However the numbers on the website appear to be hardcoded in with very dramatically different numbers.

This is vibe coded as fuck and anyone can submit a pledge, so no

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#529

Post by jermberj »

skarz wrote: post #513

Is this real? I examined to their source code and found an exposed TypeScript RPC which indicates the following: totalMembers: 4954 totalPledged: 5678872 averagePledge: 1146.320549 However the numbers on the website appear to be hardcoded in with very dramatically different numbers.

Yeah, I'm starting wonder if this is bs. They don't have a twitter account like the pledge form indicates. The youtuber that purportedly started the campaign only has like 36k subscribers, so it's not clear where such a high level of pledges would be coming from and the rpc endpoint response vs page count is pretty suspicious.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#530

Post by skarz »

jermberj wrote: post #529
skarz wrote: post #513

Is this real? I examined to their source code and found an exposed TypeScript RPC which indicates the following: totalMembers: 4954 totalPledged: 5678872 averagePledge: 1146.320549 However the numbers on the website appear to be hardcoded in with very dramatically different numbers.

Yeah, I'm starting wonder if this is bs. They don't have a twitter account like the pledge form indicates. The youtuber that purportedly started the campaign only has like 36k subscribers, so it's not clear where such a high level of pledges would be coming from and the rpc endpoint response vs page count is pretty suspicious.

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