Spirit Airlines is out of bankruptcy, achieving its objective of emerging in the first quarter, after a few paralyzing years. CEO Ted Christie says that the carrier is leaner and ready to face competitors, including his rival Southwest Airlines.
Earlier this week, Southwest shocked customers by announcing that he will start to charge for checkered bags for the first time in his half-century of flight, a huge strategy movement for the largest national American carrier. (There are some exceptions to the new rules of the Southwest bag, which take effect at the end of May.)
“I think it’s going to be painful a little because they find their foot, and we will enjoy it,” said Christie de Spirit in an interview on Thursday.
Southwest had been out of competition in the United States by offering all customers two free checkered bags, an advantage that endured recessions, fuel price peaks and other crises while most competitors have introduced bag fees and raised them every few years.
Spirit Airlines, on the other hand, made pricing with a common map in the United States, with costs for assignments of seats, checkered bags and other additional modules. It is a strategy that most of the major airlines, except for the Southwest, have copied in one form or another.
While Southwest is starting to charge bags and presents its first basic economy class, which does not include a seat assignment or does not allow free changes, the spirit could possibly win customers, said Christie.
Southwest said that he would get rid of his model of seats open to one class last year.
“There was at least one audience of people who were intentionally selected and stolen from the southwest because they thought it was easy. They knew they were going to get two bags,” said Christie. “Now that this is no longer the case, it is easy to say that they will expand their opening and that they will now look around.”
The mind is much smaller than the Southwest and even smaller than it was last year, but it rivals the airline in cities like Kansas City, Missouri; Nashville, Tennessee; Columbus, Ohio; and Milwaukee. If customers look at travel sites like ExpediaWhere Southwest is a new entrant, Spirit tickets could be cheaper and appear higher in the results, said Christie.
Other airline leaders also said they expected some southwest customers.
The president of Delta Air Lines, Glen Hauenstein, said on Tuesday at a jpmorgan industry conference that there were consumers who chose the Southwest according to his free advantage “and now these customers are to be won”.
Spirit, for its part, recently offered more tickets that include things such as headquarters and luggage.
The carrier now focuses on the return to profitability. He posted a net loss of more than $ 1.2 billion last year, more than double his loss in 2023 when she was fighting with jets put to the ground due to a recall of Pratt & Whitney engine, higher costs, more internal competition and an acquisition failed by JetBlue Airways.
Spirit has rejected several recent attempts at his colleague budget transporter Airlines Frontier. Christie said Thursday that nothing was “outside the table” and that a fifth largest airline in the United States as a low-cost carrier makes sense, but that the airline is focused on stabilization after bankruptcy.
Thanks to its restructuring process, which started in November, Spirit said that it reduced its debt to around $ 795 million. The transaction converted debt into equity for the main creditors. The carrier also received a capital infusion of $ 350 million.
Spirit plans to put his shares on the stock market but has not yet set a date.