Originally Posted by FlyGuy2002

I think that article make some good points buts misses the point on many. The suggestion that Mr Fornaro should focus on fixing spirit before a meager if misleading . Mr Fornaro only has a 3 year employment contract and is in his late 60s. Perhaps the board put him in place specifically for that purpose. Although I believe his main reason for being promoted was to increase the performance and reputation of this place.. I believe the board assigned him these tasks to return shareholder value and to set us up for a merger way down the road. Also I believe Mr Franke doesn't really care about maturing Frontier or worries about its long term business model. Franke is 78 and is essentially a business flipper.. with quite a successful record. at 78 he's not looking to be at the helm of an organically growing airline. he bought F9 for pennies on the dollar, and as soon as he can flip it and make a good return on investment, hell do so. If you're selling a house for a quick profit do you really care what the new owners do with it? Hell make his money and move on. On a side note i don't understand why everyone thinks frank is waiting for an IPO.. once frontier is public it opens up so many hurdles to selling a company. shareholder approval being on of them. and just because the ipo might climb at first, executive are restricted from selling their stock for a period of a few months and just ask executives at shake shack or go pro just how much their stock was worth 90 days after the initial IPO climb. at 78 years old if you can sell the company for a healthy profit without any headaches from millions of shareholders, why wouldn't you just take your money and ride off into the sunset?
Consolidation has worked very very well for the big guys, it stands to reason (to me) and some on wall street that it could work very well for 2 companies like ours. I don't think its imminent. I think Fornaro was brought to clean up the reputation and operational issues we have at spirit. Its not as if spirit is a total mess, its actually a very good money making machine, and he was brought in to compete with the big guys (as he did at airtran) and get this thing running like a well oiled machine before the eventual merger happens. We can all agree this company will not be the same in 5 years.. I happen to think Baldanza was a quite a trailblazer with industry changing ideas, but with low oil prices and competition from the big guys this guy was brought in to make the product more consumer friendly to compete, as well as set us up for a merger.. It makes sense in my eyes