If you're on the outside wondering if you should come to Spirit, chew on this. Based on the newest (released today) fleet plan we already have enough pilots (@ 16 pilots/plane) to get us through 2024. Yesterday on the Town Hall, when a question that appeared to be directed at B6 execs was given to TC that asked how upgrades were going to get ramped up, TC responded that "we're still upgrading." That is contrary to what JM said on the last town hall about how upgrades/month were going to increase.

Over the last two months I have moved up just under 10 spots/month. All of these people have the seniority of being Captains. Yet there are only 10 new upgrades for the 10 Vacancies. What happened to the people who left? At least one of them was a Captain. There should have been at least 11 people who upgraded.

What does this all mean? They're merely trying to replace FOs without trying to scare off current pilots. Our CA Upgrade forecast for the year has already halved. In fact it has been far less than that because the spots of those who are leaving (at least those more senior to me) are resulting in the company advertising these positions as "vacancies."


If I'm wrong about how to interpret a vacancy bid please let me know. On the last vacancy final award 10 people upgraded but about 8 people senior to me left for greener pastures. Assuming some were Captains then only 5, mas o menos, or so vacancies really happened. I know I'm not the first to do this math, but with the latest fleet plan available I figured it should be restated.

 

The latest NEO problems are going to ensure this place is in the financial toilet for quite a while. Capacity cuts and captain overstaffing are both likely scenarios..

 

The answer probably lies in the amount of available training capacity. There are probably more than ten captain vacancies that exist in a given month, but given the training time and resources needed for new hires, there is only room to train ten.

 

Didn't ULCCs do well during the previous economic downturn?

 

Well thats pretty much what the announced today on the finance call. They stated we are overstaffed, slowing growth, and delaying aircraft deliveries set for 2024 to be distributed 2025-2029. They literally said they need to slow growth and "digest"

And Teddy finally admitted that fast growth coming out of the pandemic wasn't a wise decision, no crap Teddy.

"Our growth is no longer constrained by pilots."

 

Tough to grow when you have less CA’s than FO’s and the smart CA’s are leaving. What they’re hiding is they have CA attrition problems. JetBlue overpaid big time.

 

Allegiant printed money during the recession and rode that wave to 25-30% operating margins for 5+ years. Even last quarter (Q2 2023) our operating margin was over 18%.

One of the many problems with Allegiant management is they got the hairbrained idea to build a 700m resort in the only place on the west coast of FL that is a swamp. I didn’t catch the earnings call yesterday but saw the financial disclosures. Not sure what was said to drop the stock 8% today (it was up 4% yesterday).

 

Troll says what?

 

Nothing I said was false. If calling me a troll makes you feel better about the reality of Spirit’s continuing decline then so be it.

I’ll be the first to tell anyone they’re a fool to not leave the regionals for a ULCC like Spirit. Just like I’ll be the first tell anyone they’re a massive idiot if you decline leaving Spirit for a legacy.

 

You sit on a thrown of lies.