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Let's Buy Spirit Air

letsbuyspiritair.com

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Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#531

Post by jasonmp85 »

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!"

[dead]

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#532

Post by maerF0x0 »

jabedude wrote: post #497
notepad0x90 wrote: post #24

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…

The reason people don't like Spirit has less to do with the airplanes and more to do with the typical Spirit passenger. Most of modern life in America is an elaborate series of choices to maximize the distance between yourself and Spirit airlines passengers. All the usual euphemisms apply: 'good school districts', 'safe suburban neighborhoods', etc

This. but also with frontier.

- People using devices without headphones

- People having loud phone calls on speakerphone with vulgar language

- People with bad body odor

- People looking to optimize their outcomes, even at the expense of others and net deleterious. (Speaking in numbers, willing to take +1 point of selfish outcome at the cost of several others' -1 leaving a net negative for the group)

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#533

Post by scottyah »

jhgorrell wrote: post #234
alister wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Get in line" vs "you are already rebooked". (my Air Canada experince.) Which of the two was the Air Canada experience?

"you are already rebooked" -- they were fab.

Dang no way? I had a terrible experience with them (tbf it was half a decade back at this point). We were in line to check in, something like 1.5hrs before a one hour flight. The line was agonizingly slow (only 2 of like 5 check-in counters were staffed), and when we got to the counter they said we were too late, missed the window for the flight. We only had carry-ons, were 3min late for their arbitrary window, and the plane still wasn't scheduled to leave for an hour or so.

We were clearly in line before their deadline, were certainly going to make it to the gate before they even opened for boarding, had no checked bags, and they made us buy new tickets. The cherry on top was that they ran flights every hour, so we bought the ticket for the next hour but the gate agent let us on the original flight we had- so they basically just forced us to pay double for our flight.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#534

Post by orthecreedence »

oezi wrote: post #299
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Politicians try to square those competing wills.

Yeah! They're doing their best! They definitely aren't fascist stooges trying to expand the surveillance state.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#535

Post by bdunks »

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 a common narrative that simply isn’t true.

American Airlines has the largest loyalty program.

In last week’s report to shareholders they project it will grow to $1.5B in pre tax revenue, against a total 2025 pre tax revenue of $54bn (50bn passenger revenue).

The core business of airlines is still airlines. Optimizing TRASM & CASM, with tremendous effort on upsell and cross sell of premium services (seats, bags, food), at every point in the passenger flow.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#536

Post by hnav »

bdunks wrote: post #535
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 a common narrative that simply isn’t true. American Airlines has the largest loyalty program. In last week’s report to shareholders they project it will grow to $1.5B in pre tax revenue, against a total 2025 pre tax revenue of $54bn (50bn passenger revenue). The core business of airlines is still airlines. Optimizing TRASM & CASM, with tremendous effort on upsell and cross sell of premium services (seats, bag…

profit != revenue. Airlines have thin margins and the argument is that they're getting most of their profit from the financial side of things. This is the end state of any endeavor in capitalism: up the value chain there's always the business of trading imaginary units.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#537

Post by mrguyorama »

fragmede wrote: post #425
paul7986 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or the big airlines were paying for all that disparaging marketing on the down low. I wouldnt be surprised.

I would be surprised to hear that, say, United, was paying people to post about their bad experiences with Spirit Arlines online. I'm not in marketing though so maybe that's a thing that happens.

20 years ago Southwest Airlines had a reality TV show on Discovery channel about how terrible they were, with episodes like "They ran over my wedding dress with a baggage handler truck" and "They destroyed an irreplaceable guitar of a well known musician".

I always wondered who paid for that.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#538

Post by vel0city »

striking wrote: post #210
appreciatorBus wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If airlines didn’t exist, people and goods would continue to move around the globe as they have done for thousands of years. There’s nothing magical about air travel (or any other transport mode) that makes it worthy of subsidy .

Listen, I'm the type of fella who'd gladly take the Amtrak from the East Bay to Portland, 18 hours each way, and I'm telling you even I'd do so only as a novelty. If I actually had somewhere to be, spending basically an entire day on a train would be a non-starter. And that's just on the same coast! If I had to take the Amtrak back east to see my family for the holidays I would probably just not go. My travel to the…

I'd like to see a revival of trains in the US, but I agree their impacts will be limited. I think they make sense for regional travel (Texas triangle, New England area, West coast, Midwest, maybe NM/Colorado/South Wyoming, etc.) Hopping between these regions seem like planes are the obvious choice. The distances are just so high, with often very limited regional centers connecting them in between.

I'd love to take some HSR to Austin or Houston or San Antonio from DFW, but I just can't imagine the network to make a train work competitively to get from DFW to NYC or LAX.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#539

Post by boppo1 »

hnav wrote: post #536
bdunks wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common narrative that simply isn’t true. American Airlines has the largest loyalty program. In last week’s report to shareholders they project it will grow to $1.5B in pre tax revenue, against a total 2025 pre tax revenue of $54bn (50bn passenger revenue). The core business of airlines is still airlines. Optimizing TRASM & CASM, with tremendous effort on upsell and cross sell of premium services (seats, bag…

profit != revenue. Airlines have thin margins and the argument is that they're getting most of their profit from the financial side of things. This is the end state of any endeavor in capitalism: up the value chain there's always the business of trading imaginary units.

Can you elaborate on your claim about capitalism and all activities being about trading imaginary units? My uni gave me a degree in finance & I can still basically explain CAPM off the top of my head, but I'm unfamiliar with this aspect. Always interested in expanding my understanding.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#540

Post by boppo1 »

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…

>Compare it to a flag carrier like Singapore air and it is a shockingly different product

Never flown one of these, can you describe the difference? Hard agree about what you said about the others.

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