Originally Posted by
Daviilima23
spirit only has 2 options 1. Cut pilot pay by more than half (and lose 85% of its pilots) 2. Raise prices (lose many customers). Neither are willing to budge. Therefore the airline will die. The biggest mistake spirit ever made , actually 2 biggest. Accepting to be 320NEO launch customer in US, and raise pilot pay to what it is today.
I think there’s an argument to speak about pay rates and the decline of airline performance at NK. Pay rates climbed drastically to keep employees on property. Fares did not climb to the level pay rates did and arguably helped put NK into a bad financial situation. Fares are very sensitive regardless what airline we talk about. A small fare increase can easily chase customers away. The product itself is an issue too. Outside factors like fuel, ancillary revenues (which NK highly depends on), lease agreements, fees, maintenance, etc… are factors that also can contribute to negative financial performance. We can all pick out factors that hurt along the way. I do think pay rates, while good for the employees, hurt the bottom line but there were many other factors also.