| ▲ | aliljet 12 hours ago |
| Why did Spirit die? Was there any last of this that had to do with their abysmal customer service? |
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| ▲ | Ekaros 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Airlines are not great business. Margins are not great. Fuel is significant part of their operating costs. And if it goes up too much in too short time the whole model breaks. Less margins you have the more you will be impacted. So if you are operating at edge by default fast move in costs will destroy you. |
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| ▲ | gib444 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | IAG in 2025 had a record operating margin of 15.1%. Ryanair's gross profit margin for fiscal years ending March 2021 to 2025 averaged 19.1%. Some are (were?) doing just fine - in Europe at least. Sure, it's no Big Tech or banking, but it's not like the single low digit percentage of eg retail. Perhaps some USA airlines need some advice from across the pond? | | |
| ▲ | Wurdan 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | The business model works fundamentally differently in the US and Europe due to geography. The US is big, meaning that flights are often longer, meaning that fuel is a bigger portion of the operating cost. And fuel is essentially something airlines can’t reduce the cost of compared to other operating costs where it might be possible to optimize for greater efficiency. | | |
| ▲ | gib444 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | > meaning that flights are often longer Got any sources? I found: Europe average flight length (2024): 1,157km [0] USA average flight length (I could only find old data, 2005): 1,110km [1] (even if we index this up based on upward trends, maybe another 150km, that doesn't seem a huge difference to me?) > The US is big And Europe is big too. It's actually a bit bigger than the USA by land size. Btw, IAG is a global airline group. Only ~32% of IAGs revenue is intra-Europe and domestic. Another data point: Turkish Airlines (very long-haul focused airline) 2025 net income margin was 12.1% in 2025. I'm not sure your explanation is sufficient. I don't see the exception in the USA? I am certainly willing to accept there are other differences and challenges in the USA, but I don't think it's been presented yet in this discussion. And remember the original claim was "Airlines are not great business. Margins are not great" -- EDIT: I found https://www.airportroutes.com/airlines/NKS/ which does highlight that Spirit flew lengths longer compared to Europe's average, at 1,577 km - but then using the same source for Ryanair https://www.airportroutes.com/airlines/RYR/ it's 1,456km, so again, not a huge difference. So comparing 2 seemingly very similar airlines, the European one has both managed to be profitable and not go bankrupt... -- [0] https://www.eurocontrol.int/publication/eurocontrol-data-sna... [1] https://www.hsdl.org/c/view?docid=25985 | | |
| ▲ | Wurdan 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | How are you counting average distances? Simply as the distance between two points in the carrier’s network, or are you looking at the lengths of each individual flight? The source for the point I made is a Wendover video - Why Budget Airlines are Suddenly Failing | | | |
| ▲ | esseph 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You need to look at things like average distance and median distance, do some filtering for most common destinations (example: NYC to LA, San Francisco to Miami, Denver to DC, etc), fuel costs, but also operating costs. Salaries and everything cost much more in the US than they do in Europe. Cost Per Seat Mile is $0.07 for RyanAir and $0.12 for Spirit, not counting fuel. Spirit hovers around 80% capacity while RyanAir is around 94%. RyanAir's niche is secondary airports while Spirit was compeating with larger airlines at places like LAX where gate costs are higher. In 2024 to 2025 there was an engine problem that required Spirit to ground 40% of the fleet to deal with it. Meanwhile they still had to pay for those aircraft with no revenue. This caused a major hit to the financials for a carrier that already runs on thin margins. I'm sure there's more to it, but these are the larger things I've found. |
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| ▲ | matwood 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The immediate cause was rising fuel prices. The other issue sounds like it was poorly ran. More generally, it is also a low cost carrier at a time when, after years of competing on price, airlines are seeing people willing to pay more for a better experience. All other carriers are expanding their premium options, catering to the affluent part of the K economy (for the first time ever the majority of Delta revenue came from premium cabins over main). Meanwhile, Spirit was dealing on the other side of the K who is also most impacted by increasing inflation, etc... giving Spirit zero ability to raise prices. |
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| ▲ | gib444 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Meanwhile, Spirit was dealing on the other side of the K who is also most impacted by increasing inflation, etc... giving Spirit zero ability to raise prices. Ryanair (Europe's biggest and most profitable airline) is managing it OK [0] What's difference about that side of the K in the USA vs Europe? [0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c620506dvmjo |
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| ▲ | avazhi 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
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| ▲ | gblargg 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Some of us don't consume the mainstream news and don't fly. | | |
| ▲ | avazhi 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | If you didn't know about the war in Iran and the effects it has had on oil and thus jet fuel prices, I'm not sure what you're doing on HN. | | |
| ▲ | gblargg 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This story is about a particular airline failing (out of all the others that aren't). Do you think Spirit airline's situation is something serious I should have been keeping up with? I do drive a car and get gas, and the price increase has been modest but not alarming, in the context of the last decade. | |
| ▲ | Kwpolska 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The war in Iran was the final nail in the coffin. But they were running out of cash for the past few years. If the Iran situation was so bad by itself, we would surely see other airlines failing now. | | |
| ▲ | avazhi 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Spirit could simply be the first of several; the effects may also be delayed. WGA isn't looking good either, for a number of reasons. Just because it's the first doesn't mean it will be the only one. It goes without saying but apparently you need to be told that there has to a first here, after all. The war is only 2 months in. Full clarity won't come for 2-3 years. It's likely several airlines will take hits on their balance sheets from this that they won't be able to recover from, but they'll fight or go into hardcore refinance mode or get bailed out before actually going bankrupt, but this will remain the ultimate cause. |
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| ▲ | robin_reala 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Small regional airline failing isn’t a big news story in my typical parts of the internet. | | |
| ▲ | avazhi 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | No, Spirit is/was not a 'small regional'. You asked if this was caused by or related to bad customer service. This was 100% caused by the increase in jet fuel prices due to the war in Iran. Obviously huge swings in jet fuel prices affect budget carriers more than, say, United or American or Lufthansa or Singapore Airlines, which have many (many) more options when jet fuel prices rise. Many countries, including many third world countries, have regional airlines. It has nothing to do with America in particular, and the usage of that term is not an American-ism. A good non-American example is Qantas and QantasLink, the latter being a regional airline, and the Aussies refer to it as such. | | |
| ▲ | chrisandchris 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | That really sounds line the US is the only country in the world. Considering the world is bigger, I would call Spirit maybe regional, but not small. Ask some europeans, basically no one will know Spirit - as US people may not know e.g. Wizz. | | |
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