Spirit Airlines is filing for bankruptcy

Not sure which English you are referencing, but "Filing for bankruptcy" only means the legal/literal definition, at least in my 40+ years in the PNW. "Declare Bankruptcy" tends to be used more colloquially...

Regardless of the intent, it is a misleading rewording of the original article title.

As - I think - a reasonably experienced English speaker, I strongly disagree. "Filing for bankruptcy" is not a phrase used to mean "going bankrupt soon, but not yet officially". It's always used literally.

I would argue these are still distinct meanings: one has speculative implications the other has tangible results. Announcing a marital engagement may be important, but the marriage is not formal until the marriage certificate is filed. In the context of news, its important to get right.

"Filing" is distinct from "Filling". In this context "filing" means lodging the papers with the court, and that typically has an immediate automatic legal effect (the Automatic Stay).

That’s just plain not true.

Which airline is that cheap from SF to Paris? Sounds interesting. I'm in Europe myself

Major problem with your survey there: Google travel doesn't appear to cover Ryanair or easyJet, or most of the other major European budget airlines. Select London Stansted, say (from which there are uncountable <100eur flights) and you only get one (because Stansted is mostly budget airline focused).

Your data is, more or less "if you ignore the budget airlines, there are few cheap flights from Barcelona", which is true, but not particularly useful. Dublin<>Barcelona, say, tends to be 25eur each way when there's not much demand, including taxes and charges (though you'll pay extra if you want to take _bags_).

Barcelona is one of the most visited cities in the world for tourism. SF, not so much.

There is no intra-Europe flight as long as SF is to NY. There is no narrow body flight that serves two full meals in economy in Europe. There are practically no wide-body intra-Europe flights, certainly none that serve any meals. Most flights in Europe are super short and nearly all of them are on narrow body planes that don't have the capacity to serve meals for everyone.

I've flown Frontier a few times and the most recent time they were delayed by like 5 hours (maintenance issue, no replacement plane) and once they finally started boarding, they plucked out like 40 people whose bags were "too big" and had to pay $100 at the gate so they can board with them. You have to have extreme contempt for your customers to waste even more time after you already wasted 1000+ human hours just on this flight alone, let alone all the subsequent flights that day that will be impacted because your operations rely on every plane being on time. No apology at any point either.

Spirit is no different. They hate you and they make sure you know it.

I would be curious to know exactly _why_ you think my argument is wrong, especially when I have proposed a decent mechanism relating to population density: cheap semirural airports and short flights. Frankfurt-Hahn or Paris Beauvais or Girona or Weeze have millions of people living right next door and are dirt cheap (multiple orders of magnitude cheaper than US airports.) Meanwhile, there are far more small rural airports in the US than in Europe, by approximately a factor of three [0] [1], but not enough people live by them to make regular flights efficient. For a great example of this, look at the Essential Air Service and how many taxpayer dollars the US spends to serve the many rural communities that would otherwise have no flights at all.

[0] https://www.indexmundi.com/united_states/airports_with_paved...

[1] https://www.indexmundi.com/european_union/airports_with_pave...

AIUI low-cost flights work best in an area where there's a lot of sizable city pairs about 1h-3h away from each other. Europe has more such pairs than the US, as indicated by the much higher population density.

I imagine most non-corporate, non-loyalty fliers use flight search engines where they can easily compare prices. If Spirit has the worst reputation, which I think is a given, consumers have to weigh the price difference between Spirit and a 'regular' carrier against that bad reputation.

That begs the question, how much cheaper is a Spirit flight compared to other carriers for a given itinerary? In my experience, it's maybe $50-$150, compared to a trip that might cost $500-$2000 overall. It's not like fliers are choosing between Spirit and first class on Delta. They're deciding whether or not to spend an extra ~$100 to be slightly less miserable on a trip that may be one of their largest single expenses of the year, and maybe their only trip of the year.

The thing is, comfort is sticky (as I well know sadly, second class is hard to bear for me).

Low-cost companies targeted people with low disposable income at the cost of comfort.

People who used to have low disposable income have now not enough to travel by plane (or at all), and people who had enough to use standard companies have still enough to use them.

A very interesting fact is that median income grew in the US (less than average, but close enough). The standard deviation (from memory, if this isn't the translation of 'écart-type' I'm sorry) grew also, which indicate that the recent economic 'boom' the US experienced since the end of covid took more than 50% of us citizen with it, but clearly not a huge majority. Germany experienced a very similar thing since 2012. To my knowledge, in Germany it was most likely caused by a transfer from progressive taxation to a fixed one, reducing purchasing powers of people with low disposable income. In the US it seems it's a direct income issue.

In the US? Absolutely. Look at Apple's market share post-pandemic, the growth of organic food, luxury spending, cars, anything really. There has been an overwhelming shift to luxury. Google the 2020 vs 2023 Prius. Hell, even McDonalds is trying to move upscale!

The only domestic flight I've been on in the US was United, and it was possibly the worst flight I've ever been on, though my judgement may be coloured by how late it was. Beyond that, though, I'm not sure I've ever been on a plane that felt as much like it was... falling apart (I'm sure it was structurally safe, but some of the ceiling panels were out of place, a number of seats were broken, etc). It wouldn't fly (see what I did there?) with Ryanair.

Legroom and general plane modernity/comfort were the big ones for me, as well as check-in and luggage drop-off procedures. The European and Asian airlines do the basics really well, and I never felt uncomfortable in them. I remember loving my experience with Norwegian Air, for example, which beats ANY US airline I've ever flown on (United, Delta, Southwest, American). Only Alaska came close, but only during covid (when there was a lot of empty space). Otherwise, in normal times, the US airlines have incredibly cramped legroom, really old planes that you often can't stand up in, have minimal overhead space, etc. This is especially true in regional/rural routes, but even the urban hub to hub ones are not great in my experience.

The US airlines are generally tolerable, but they just feel... bad. Like they don't really care about their customers at all and are just trying to milk you for every last cent and would really prefer that you simply not be a customer if you're not satisfied, so that somebody else can take your place, rather than trying to make you comfortable. Everything is cramped and dirty and in a rush and poorly run all the time. By contrast, the processes in Europe and Asia are so streamlined and the staff were much nicer.

However, Frontier and Spirit were especially atrocious. I've never known anyone who was willing to fly them more than once. "Never again" is a common refrain I hear whenever I discuss them with other travelers, or even just walk past one of their lines in the airport. Ugh.

> I’ve done every mode of transport in Europe. The planes are your buses.

Sorry, what do you mean by that? Not sure what "planes are your buses" means?

Over here, some of our airlines are about as bad as our (terrible) Greyhound buses. Some are even worse than that. I never had that kind of experience abroad.

Well, Americans have attitude problems (which I say as an American)...

I've never had any problems with American flight attendants, though. Or even the planes. I mostly just want to get there, I bring a book or a programming project, and all I need is a seat. Low expectations, I guess.

That was not my experience flying in China. The staff was bad, the plane was bad and the facilities were retched.

I’ve not done it more than a handful of times so don’t want to say it’s universal but Chinese airlines do not compare favorably to American ones in my limited experience.

After spending an 11 hour flight recently with the person in front resting gently on my knees for about 9 hours, I'm all for non-reclining seats; Ryanair is into something there.

I think luxury is the wrong word. I have a hierarchy of US airlines in my head that guides my domestic airfare purchase decisions and Spirit is at the bottom. American and United are near the bottom too. I never fly first class or business class, so I'm always looking for the least miserable coach ticket. For me, that's Delta, JetBlue and Alaska. I imagine a lot of fliers think the same way and though their own rankings may vary, Spirit is at the top of nobody's list.

And what's the difference is cost anyway? Maybe $40.

> Europeans with adult stable jobs fly Ryanair and Easyjet because this is the best that they can afford on European salaries.

Not really. The difference isn't even that big compared to legacy European airlines these days. Ryanair doesn't do bottom barrel (eg €5) pricing anymore and the legacy airlines also charge for extras now like checked luggage and sometimes even carry on.

I just fly Ryanair when it's convenient due to time and routes. I honestly don't care which airline I'm on. In fact I like Ryanair because I can just buy the foods and comforts I want like priority boarding instead of having to get some pompous frequent flyer card from the legacy airlines.

> Europeans with adult stable jobs fly Ryanair and Easyjet because this is the best that they can afford on European salaries.

Nonsense. It's because they're sufficiently cheaper on certain routes, and when you're taking multiple trips a year, the price difference accumulates; and also because they have very good point to point service, so if you live in a non-hub for the national airline city - a Bordeaux, Lyon, Birmingham, Manchester, Edinburgh, Hamburg, Köln, Varna, etc, your flight options are a flight with a connection in the hub, or a direct flight with a low cost carrier to a destination.

Have you ever flew Spirit or just believe the viral videos that can easily edited not telling the whole story to completely made up?

Not really. If Ryanair is half the cost of say Lufthansa for a 2 hour flight, I'll go with Ryanair. A flight is a flight, I'd rather spend the money on a better hotel or eating out rather than a marginally better short flight.

I've never once seen people fighting or screaming on a cheap flight.

For long haul I have no problem going with better airlines (which still means European or Asian over US carriers every time...).

Please elaborate on what you found racist or xenophobic in my comment.

Spirit has nice planes and good service compared to Frontier.

> it's from airlines treating us like we are cattle

And even with that, they're losing money and going bankrupt. The big 3 carriers in the US are propped up by their loyalty programmes which are surprisingly profitable; Alaska is the only other carrier doing good and expanding. Everyone else is struggling in some form.

I'm not sure why I'm getting downvoted so heavily for this comment.

Instead of giving two smaller airlines a chance to work together and compete against the "Big Four", denying the JetBlue merger all but guaranteed that Spirit would have to file for bankruptcy.

The company's assets are worth more than the company itself so I wouldn't be surprised if it simply liquidates with the result being no fares (because no Spirit airlines), no seats (because no Spirit airlines), and millions of customers with less of a choice (because no Spirit airlines).

I mean, presumably the shareholders will be wiped out, but the actual airline will probably continue existing in some form.