Spirit Airlines files for bankruptcy – again. PLEASE . . . no more bailouts or government guaranteed loans !!!!

[i]Photo above - A Spirit Airlines customer in distress is assisted by air marshals. The circumstances are unclear, but possibly she might have just learned the airline has filed bankruptcy again.
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Full disclosure: I’ve never flown on Spirit Airlines, despite being headquartered in my home state of Florida. Dallas appears to be Spirit's passenger hub. You can’t get anywhere on Spirit unless you fly through Dallas and change planes. That already sounds like a flawed business model. Dallas isn’t the worst hub they could have picked, but it’s ranked only 3 out of 5 stars. If Spirit wanted to hasten their death spiral they could add more flights through Laguardia, Newark, and San Antonio.

Did I mention this is the second bankruptcy for Spirit – in the past year? Stop keeping this company on life support. Other indigenous airlines like Aztec, Cochise and Mesa already went quietly to their sky burials. Will anybody really miss Spirit? I'm getting along just fine without Pan Am, National, Eastern, and Northwest.

During the Covid 19 lockdowns, airlines got a whopping $62 billion in government handouts to keep flying. This was on Trump’s watch, not Biden’s, so don’t say it can’t happen again. The wild card is Spirit’s route map. Someone might want to keep Florida and Texas red instead of blue.

I don’t want to be accused of picking on Spirit in particular, or even on airlines in the aggregate. A pandemic stimulus audit identified 650,000 companies which got government grants or loans. From biggies like Exxon and Boeing to hotels, casinos, resorts, cruise lines, strip clubs. There’s a link below. This was a fiasco financially, but possibly a real vote-getter.

Among passengers/customers, Spirit has the worst reputation imaginable. The only companies scoring lower are X and Trump Enterprises. So even passengers might not want the airline saved again.

Spirit is still $7 billion in debt, about the same as when it last filed for bankruptcy, 9 months ago. And it still has 200+ jets, and 20,000 employees. Will 20,000 votes be enough bait for some politician to propose government assistance? This is an economics question nobody should tackle.

I’m just sayin’ . . .



Spirit Airlines Files for Bankruptcy: What It Means for Travelers

Treasury names 650,000 companies that got U.S. small business PPP loans - CBS News