Calling ourselves winners in the space... Tone deaf from a rich CEO. I'm sure the people at Spirit who aren't sure if they will have jobs in the near future appreciate that.

Glad you thought his video was excellent, meanwhile he's glad he's getting an entire contract cycle out of us as one of the lowest paid airbus pilot groups in the country. But yeah we won the race to the bottom.

 

He said the new Spirit plan is shifting to "mid cost" operator which sounds like they're going to have to provide a more premium product to achieve.

 

Frontier is a winner in the space. If your main competitor just declared bankruptcy, and you did not, you are winning.

Period, the end

(Barry the businessman is indeed delaying contract talks as long as possible. He gets A+ score for "don't spend money until you have to." he gets F- score for "building morale with the Pilots)

It is what it is

 

I'll repost what I said on the NK Plan B forum:

"They are basing getting profitable by raising market share in the $200 class from 15% to 20%, sloping to the $600 class from 1.5% to 15%. Maybe getting another 5% @ $200 is achievable, but getting 10 times as many people @ $600 and over 15% of everyone in between without a new pitch & more BFSs, new gate people, food in the airplanes, better reservations options (person you can talk to) is not going to happen. I heard UAL didn't want NK planes because it would take too long and expensive to reconfigure them.

Napkin math: for the first 6 months of the year, NK lost $350M, flying 12M people at $108/person. Breaking even would have required another $30/person. Focussing on getting an extra $50 has a better chance than focussing on an extra $500..."

 

I was at NK under Indigo. Things got much better after they left and we got Ted. Except NK lost money, and F9 didn't. Not exactly win/win....

 

Maybe NK was Indigo's classroom.

 

Similar (but inverse) conundrum for those at F9 pre-Indigo.

 

Yeah, my UAL SIM partner left F9 after a very long career for that reason.

 

The way to max profitiability as a ULCC in the US is NOT hard. It's been done before. You just have to be willing to do it. The growth is slow (several years) but certainly obtainable.

First, you need GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE. It is the FIRST thing you must have. If you have to lose money to establish a loyal customer base, it'll be worth it in the end. Frontier and Spirit are perfect examples of how not doing this may work in the short term (during a down economy) but is not sustainable.

Second, you need to develop a hearty rewards and credit card program. Airlines don't always make money but credit cards almost always do. Loyalty in these areas (as well as great customer service) allows you to charge higher prices for the same product being offered by others. We have this but are late to the party with it.

Third, you need to be SMART about your airline decisions. Base choices, route structure/network, HF radios and seating configurations, being on time, etc. all matter. Again, our leadership is not very good at this. Devising a point to point network (when everyone else is hub and spoke) is not all that revolutionary (especially since Europe did it first). Once that plays out and adjustment to current/future times is necessary, this leadership group is severely lacking.

If we re-brand, anything short of these three areas is doomed to mediocrity/failure.

 

We will see what happens... our performance was terrible 2 years ago, it has improved A LOT since then. Even if it still isn't great. We will see what these announcements are... Just another day