Spirit Airlines canceled all flights and is going out of business | Hacker News Reader

Spirit Airlines canceled all flights and is going out of business

cnn.com

85 pointsteleforce49 comments

Spirit dying is going to mean prices go up substantially across industry. They provided a price floor above which other airlines couldnt raise prices without risking losing business to spirit. Usually the difference was pretty small, basically a market calculated fee for not wanting to deal with Spirit. But since their bankruptcies, in areas where they have pulled out, the other airlines have been seen to raise prices by something like 12-15%. I would expect similar or worse now that they're gone for good.

>Spirit dying is going to mean prices go up substantially across industry.

Maybe, but the economics of budget airline service are solid, so we will undoubtedly get new entrants. What wasn't solid was Spirit's outright disdain for their customers. It was completely unnacceptable how they operated, and the market has spoken as such. Even Frontier has humans you can talk to. Being stranded by one of Spirit's constant delayed flights with no recourse but an automated chatbot should have been illegal. It reached a point where your stated departure time was really no more than a vague suggestion of the time window you might be leaving around. They pushed the trend of service enshittification to its extreme conclusion and people finally had enough.

Frontier has humans that you can talk to, for a fee. They charge $25 for going to the counter at the airport.

For someone who's familiar with both, does that mean Spirit was America's Ryanair?

An unsustainable price floor, apparently. Which suggests that it’s not the appropriate floor price, unless Spirit crashed for reasons unrelated to airport / plane / gate operations costs?

The sudden rise in fuel prices due to the Iran war seems to be at blame. If you have thin margins and didn't hedge, then a shock like that can wipe you out. Probably won't be the last.

‘Didn’t hedge’ because they set the price below the resilience floor and couldn’t; or because they paid out the good times to shareholders instead of resilience; or..?

It might've been the straw that broke the camel's back, but they've been unprofitable since the pandemic.[1] Mainline airlines introducing "basic economy" fares that weren't as no-frills as Spirit seems to have been a contributor.

[1] https://theaircurrent.com/airlines/spirit-airlines-trump-adm...

One of the best flights I've ever taken was Spirit and had 8 passengers on it, 5 of which were transferring staff/pilots. The second worst flight I've ever had the pleasure of enduring was also Spirit - the worst was Easyjet (simply because their seat dimensions are somehow smaller than the average human and generally incompatible with human physiology), and third worst was Ryanair because a mass of orange colored Brits are with near a unlimited supply of duty free gin is... amusing enough to move it up a few notches.

I've flown on Spirit exactly once, thanks to an ex-wife who fit the "needlessly frugal" type talked about yesterday to a tee. Grew up in foster care and couldn't acknowledge we weren't poor. We flew into Miami during some bad weather and it's the only time ever in decades of flying I've seen the flight attendants visibly scared. If you've ever gotten speed wobbles on a skateboard, it was just like that. I'm still amazed the plane didn't fall apart in the air. They also charged for water.

Most flight attendants know very little about the actual flying part.

Do you think the weather would have been better if you had flown with another carrier?

It's quite possible other carriers would have gone around the worst and that the economy airline saved fuel.

Spirit Airlines has had a perfect safety record with no passenger fatalities and every plane that ever took off from its 34 year history landed safely. I'd trust them more than other airlines.

> a mass of orange colored Brits are with near a unlimited supply of duty free gin

I fly direct from London to Vegas occasionally. The upside is that going through immigration is trivial -- of 270 people on a flight, 265 go to the "foreign passports" line. The downside is the 15 minute wait after getting to the gate for the police to come and arrest the people who were fist fighting in the aisle.

I actually flew Spirit for the first time yesterday, coming home from a week in Las Vegas.

There were 20+ "deadhead" flight attendants on board. I assume Spirit was rushing to get them all home. All in all, it wasn't a bad flight, the flight attendants who were working the flight seemed cheerful enough, even though I'm sure they knew they may be unemployed soon. (Presumably management gave them strict orders to not discuss the state of things)

Of course they still charged me $20+ for a soda and a couple of snacks lol.

Spirit was a once and never again situation for me personally. But I’d like to think it helped drive prices in some of the competing routes.

For $9 I'll shed a tear.

Better check the baggage fees before you make an offer like that.

They subsidized cheap prices with market segmentation. This is not the dunk everyone thinks it is. Some who needed it could fly for dirt cheap prices, subsidized by people who needed the add ons and were less price sensitive. Now they just, what? Have no option that's that cheap. Hooray I guess?

We need functioning poverty where people can still get by even if they fall below a certain threshold, they have a recourse to getup and live without being treated like animals.

Around The World with Louis C.K. | Jim Norton Can't Save You EP 68

https://youtu.be/z0cypFadE3k?t=2394

In a podcast, Louis C.K. has remarked on his observations of "functioning poverty" during his travels in India, contrasting it with the homelessness and societal dysfunction he sees in New York City.

His idea of functioning poverty in that video seems to involve shanty towns and more "side hustles" for the poor.

His heart may be in the right place but he may be too rich for this conversation. He comes off as more than a little bit out of touch here

Are you saying observation about a situation requires a privileged or non privileged position?

Not at all, I'm just saying he has a shitty position

What can be asserted by a comment, can also be rejected by a comment.

Oh neat; I’ve been calling it the “economy of the poor” since I can’t find any proper conversation on it. This is the first time I’ve seen someone bring it up

But I think the notable aspect is not that they have recourse, it’s that the economics properly scales down. Can’t afford 20 cigarettes? An Indian shop will sell you 10. Can’t afford 10? They’ll sell you 1. Can’t afford 1? They’ll sell you half a cigarette.

Can’t afford clean water? They’ll sell you mildly dirty water. Can’t afford mildly dirty water? They’ll sell you dirty water.

Can’t afford a modern, well built, safe car? How about one with 3 wheels? No doors? No AC? 10 MPG? The crumpling structure of a tin can? An engine with less HP than a lawnmower?

In the US, there’s an arbitrary cutoff where you simply aren't allowed to be sold goods and services by anyone in normal society. It’s not about giving recourse; it’s about not actively trying to ostracize them as a separate class of humanity.

You have to actively work to stop “functional poverty” from existing. In any normal setup, it’s just more of the same economy as otherwise.

Dutch frugality means booking the cheapest flight to your 4 star resort. It is a badge of honour.

Isn't the 4 star resort also usually in a country that has at least 50 to 1 difference in purchasing power?

Control-F "antitrust". Zero hits.

Why no discussion of "yet another victory" for antitrust? Was 2024 really that long ago?

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s...

Instead of complaining, start that discussion. Add value.

To me it's dishonest to write an article like this without mentioning the reason why Spirit's employees and customers are in this situation: because the owners realized that it wasn't a viable business but were blocked from selling their company by the government.

It's not like the article doesn't go into the history of the company either. There's a paragraph that starts with "Spirit has been unprofitable since the pandemic..." To deliberately leave out one of the most important parts of that history is extremely deceptive.

Spirit was like Ryan Air, the bus of the sky, but their main benefit for me was that they flew from smaller airports. About the same distance away from me are Philadelphia International (PHL) and Atlantic City Airport (ACY). PHL is always a production, with either expensive parking or parking in Narnia. It's crowded, expensive, and security lines are dicey.

At Atlantic City airport I could park in an economy lot and just drag my luggage into the terminal. There were short security lines, and the airport was small enough that if anyone was running late for their flight they'd send them through first. I was able to trade having to rid an bus in the air for a much easier time going through the airport. IDK that anyone else will fill in there. Only other flights are American, just flying from Philly.

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47983873

Good news for Frontier it seems

Frontier wouldn't refund or give me credit for my one-way flight even after I gave them paperwork showing I had recently tested positive for COVID-19. They didn't dispute the results either, just said that 48 hours wasn't enough notice. Sorry I didn't get sick earlier? Suffice to say I would never fly Frontier again

I won't miss the nickel and diming that's for sure...

Hello! This is Moscow calling. What are you doing with these planes of yours now? Can you pass them under the table for an unspecified amount? Regards £ wishes!

This is the result of Elizabeth Warren blocking the merger with JetBlue.

I’m not saying it wasn’t the right thing to do. I don’t know. But this is definitely on her either way.

If it lowers air travel then it's a good thing, since it's probably the only way the US will meaningfully invest in high speed rail.

Quite the opposite. You reckon taking planes out of the skies will lower the cost flying? Supply and demand.

Yes, it will likely raise prices.

My point/question is whether this will reduce air travel and increase demand for rail.

Doubtful. People will either just eat the higher costs or simply drive. The infrastructure is lacking (relative to airports), and there's unlikely to be any support for expanding it anytime soon - passing costs on to consumers is the current US culture.

I think OP meant whether this might "lower the demand" for air travel...due to the expected spike in prices

Those airplanes aren't going to be scrapped. Demand for flights hasn't reduced much. Other airlines will buy up the airplanes and put them back into service.

Spirit's business model was a threat to most airlines and had forced them to lower prices. This just takes away that pressure to lower their prices.

Really? Spirit had a very limited route network. And Delta and United have been successfully pursuing a market strategy based more on service quality than low prices. They account for the majority of profit in the whole industry.

All for this if the train cruises at 600mph.

For cities where the flight is an 1.5 hours or less high speed rail (300kph) is usually about the same (if not slightly faster) because it's much faster to get in and out.

This works even better when the train station is closer to downtown than the airport.

I think, if you follow the airport guidelines (at least in the USA), trains win (or at least come close) for even longer distances than that. Most airports recommend that you arrive at least two hours early to ensure that you can make it through security and get to your gate on time. That means that a 3 hour flight is actually a 5 hour time commitment. And, as you noted, you've also got to get to the airport first, and airports tend to be far away (45 minutes+) from the main part of the city in a lot of places. So, a 3 hour flight might actually require 6 hours of transit time / waiting in many cases.

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