For years, Spirit Airlines soared with a low-cost, no-frills business model. This week, it came in for a bumpy landing. WSJ's Alison Sider explains how the big airlines learned to compete with Spirit––and helped put the carrier in bankruptcy. Further Listening: -The Love Triangle Over Spirit Airlines -Frontier, Spirit and the Future of Low-Cost Airlines Further Reading: -How Spirit Airlines Went From Industry Maverick to Chapter 11 Bankruptcy -Discount Airline Spirit Files for Bankruptcy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why do people have strong opinions about Spirit Airlines?
Our colleague Allison Sider has covered airlines for six years. And in that time, she's heard a lot of impassioned takes about people's favorite and least favorite airlines. But there's one carrier that seems to inspire especially strong feelings.
I think probably Spirit Airlines is the one that people generally have the strongest opinions about.
Spirit, the low-cost, no-frills airline. Okay, so what do spirit lovers love about spirit?
People who love spirit and maybe love is a strong word, but people who tolerate spirit, you know, it's just the fares are cheap and that is really meaningful. I mean, that allows people to travel, take trips that they ordinarily wouldn't be able to, you know, spoken to people who are in a long distance relationship.
And, you know, if you're visiting someone once a month, it makes a huge difference to pay a hundred dollars or less for a round trip ticket. And you're willing to put up with a lot to make that happen.
People hate on Spirit Airlines way too much. I fly them all the time and it's a fine experience. I fly them so much I got their credit card.
And what do the haters say? It just isn't the most luxurious or the most comfortable airline.
I just needed to come on here to share with you all how much I hate Spirit Airlines. And it's like, I know. I know I did this to myself. I'm a cheap b****. I chose to fly Spirit. I know that, like, this is the kind of flight where I only get to bring, like, a small purse. But I'm still angry.
Love it or hate it, though, there's one thing you can't deny about Spirit. It changed air travel in America.
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Chapter 2: What do Spirit Airlines customers love?
The Biden administration is suing to block JetBlue's acquisition of South Florida-based Spirit Airlines.
Biden's Justice Department did not like the idea of a JetBlue-Spirit merger. They were concerned that losing a low-cost airline would make the industry less competitive. And they pointed to what JetBlue was planning to do with Spirit. JetBlue had announced plans to retrofit some of Spirit's planes, to take Spirit's super cramped seats and replace them with roomier seats.
So that sounds great for flyers, but, you know, antitrust enforcers are concerned when they hear that because it means... you're taking away a lot of cheap seats from the market. You're also taking away this kind of maverick airline in spirit that goes into markets with bargain basement fares and forces all the other airlines to lower their fares.
So the Justice Department is very concerned that this merger is going to result in higher fares and it's going to be bad for consumers.
JetBlue and Spirit disagreed. They argued that combining would make them an even more formidable challenger to the big airlines. But in January, the judge on the case ruled against them.
A judge blocked the Spirit-JetBlue merger, said it's bad for consumers. And he said kind of famous last words. He said in his ruling, you know, Spirit is a small airline, but there are people who love it. And, you know, Spirit fans, this one's for you.
Spirit would remain unmerged. It would stay an independent maverick, forcing the entire industry to lower its prices. That was the idea. But there was a problem. As the government argued why Spirit was so important, the airline's financial picture was getting worse.
This ultra-low-cost carrier business model kind of just fell apart, like, really pretty rapidly. That's next.
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