This is not completely true. I’ve actually looked into this. The best policy I could find as an individual was through Harvey Watt. It was the only policy that paid own occupation until age 65. I don’t remember the premiums exactly but I remember them being so high it was cost prohibitive.

The Kicker: FIVE YEAR (5) waiting period from the date of disability until first payment! I say again, it was a FIVE YEAR wait to get the first check. They are banking that you get your medical back. This was the only policy that I found to pay a reasonable percentage of pay and pay until age 65. There are none.

Even if you go that route scope is still wide open. Imo there will be consolidation (read merger) and or partnerships/joint ventures (read codesharing) of ULCC in the not to distant future if it’s not protected against. We have the best scope of them and it still sucks. Frontiers is worse. And obviously WOW and Norwegian have zero. I believe Norwegian already codeshares with EasyJet in Europe. Picture this: Spirit sells a ticket from ATL to BFE Europe. You fly Spirit from ATL to FLL then take Norwegian from FLL to Europe and then easyJet onward. This can happen. Or connecting to WOW in BWI or LAX. Or just codeshare out even the first leg to frontier and have zero Spirit pilots flying that revenue stream. These INTL LCC are only growing and we need to be doing that flying not them.

This wasn’t really much of a risk in 2010 because Spirit was the only ULCC and nobody would dare codeshare with us and expose their pax to the back end of a Spirit plane. The game has changed and that scope is far more important now. Devil is in the details though and we haven’t seen the language just told that we have restrictions on it and strengthened merger protections