I remember a big consumer product retailer out of a small city in Ark that used the model of going into tons of smaller markets and underselling all the mom and pop stores and pharmacies on household items like toilet paper, school supplies and cheap clothes. They sold everything - tires and other auto accessories, small furniture, TVs, eggs and even gas. They were the one stop shop w/ low prices.

People flocked to them and away from their neighborhood store they had shopped for years. The store's name was Wal-Mart. Eventually, those smaller shops went out of business.

As soon as that happened, Wal Mart raised prices.

Why wouldn't United do the same in FLL? Especially considering NK's 6% market share.

NK going away is not going to benefit F9 as much as people think - it's just one less competitor for the Big 4 to deal w/.

 

I agree with all of the above, with a slight variation on benefiting F9. The Wal-Mart shopper (Spirit/F9 customer by the way....) now has one ULCC to shop at, before going to JC Penney (AA), then Dillards (UAL), then Macy's (DAL).

The next stop for the Spirit customer is now ONLY Frontier.

Will Barry keep them here or will they bounce to the next store?

 

While this seems like it's the case, it most certainly is NOT.

Shoppers can visit WalMart, JC Penny, Dillards and Macy's all at once via Expedia, Travelocity, etc. Since most people who don't have any loyalty shop by price, Dillards, Macy's and Penney's can all afford to match WalMarts prices (which are very limited) in the single shopping market which has all products at the same time. Right now, F9 has about 20ish destinations from Atlanta. DL has about 50. I'm sure they can match our 20 w/ little impact to their pockets. We share bases w/ every airline except for Tampa.

No one is leaving NK just to shop F9 and now the Big 3 have only 1 company to match. About the only hope F9 has is to entice those NK CC holders and loyalty program members to now join ours.

Or change the model.

 

It'll be interesting to see what happens on the West Coast. Spirit just folded most of its network. Do we capitalize or do others?

 

We hit it really hard after JetBlue left. Some key cities in there might see some uptick.

 

I posted in the other forum. Vegas is having some tourism issues. This rhymes with the Florida over saturation of several years ago.

 

I have been seeing that online as well. Vegas was never really a moneymaker for us from what BB has said in the past. But some of those other cities Spirit moved out of were a bit surprising.

 

yeah. One issue is the casinos are working in tandem for more premium customers. The middle class and lower class customers Vegas has historically had has a habit of bringing in “trash”. They just won a major lawsuit several days ago against the AI price fixing they use:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/govern...al-2025-08-15/

“Wynn Resorts (WYNN.O), opens new tab, Caesars and Treasure Island convinced a U.S. appeals court on Friday to turn back a consumer class action lawsuit accusing them of using shared computer software algorithms to illegally coordinate on Las Vegas hotel room prices.”

that’s def gonna hurt the ulcc. BTW this is just one of many problems hurting Vegas.

Not optimistic.

 

I agree that Vegas is going to take a beating, but both us and Spirit connect a lot of these cities without touching LAS. Do we pursue that option or roll over and give it to others?

 

idk about a roll over. I think it’s gonna be like Florida bases over the past several years (maybe worse). Less movement, less growth, harder to get left seat, harder for a new hire to get right seat, reserve forever, weekend and holiday redeyes if you ever get a line.

IMO. YMMV