Originally Posted by
DrSteveBrule
This is it. Investors have been sounding the alarms since for quite a while. Stock price hasn't just started tanking now due to COVID, this is an extension of a longer period of declining value and increased risk.
Another thing that is pretty wild to see is Spirit (thus far) is still planing to grow year over year for the months of April and May, when everyone, including their peers at Frontier are reducing capacity. There very well could be something the public doesn't see (bookings/etc). However, it also makes me believe they are either waiting to see how this plays out, doing too little, or the worst case scenario: are forced to press forward.
If you have a lot of leveraged/leased aircraft and you don't have the luxury of downsizing, Spirit may just be pressing forward because they have no other option than to do so. That fleet is going to be burning through cash sitting or flying, so they might as well not give up the market share and are gambling that this will be a short term demand issue.