Originally Posted by Name User

Spirit owns 50 jets unencumbered IIRC, that means without liens on them. The other ~150 were sold and then leased back IIRC to generate income which means their terms are going to be pretty bad. During the go-go years pre-covid, Spirit was actually converting leases to owned jets and said it saved them $1m a year per jet to do it that way.

Guessing the 50 they own were so worn out they weren't able to extract any value out of them doing sale-leaseback deals.

It would be cheaper to just go out and buy CEOs on the open market then purchase all of Spirit's assets and debts.

Here are current purchase/lease rates for CEOs:
A319 – $8.4 - $25.4M, $65-235,000
A320 – $10.9 - $32.9M, $110-290,000
A321 – $14.4 - $42.6M, $140-330,000

To put it in perspective, AA was paying $1,500/month to lease their MD80s!