make comments at regulations.gov about the complete ridiculousness of government pandering in “free markets”

How free were the markets when Uncle Sugar gave every airline grants and offered cheap loans 4 years ago?

Well, you got me. Except for the fact that the very job of the government is to protect and support the nation they represent. They absolutely have allowed which in my opinion they shouldn’t have a say on what companies own, buy, merge with or acquire four giants. Now when some little players want to join a better conference that’s all of the sudden anticompetitive.

Now the government is spending Taxpayer money inquiring how we feel about it. They don’t care how you feel about it, but they’d like to spend money. It’s B.S. they should stay out of the way and let free markets determine who succeeds and who fails.

The bond holders do not stand to lose anything. There are more than enough assets to sell that they could recoup their assets. Why would be bond holders now want to risk exchanging their 8% interest rate on $3B for equity that could go to zero? The people that bought those bonds bought a bond that paid an interest rate based on risk. They aren't private equity investors willing to lose everything. Bonds have conditions and the people and funds that invested in those bonds did so to capture a steady return and not buy stock in Spirit. If they wanted to do that they could have just bought spirit stock.

The bond fund guidelines likely won't allow the managers to do a conversion to anything other than another bond.

You can bet that the bondholders (not the bond managers) are going to fight any conversion of their relatvely safe, asset backed bonds to some other risky asset class regardless of the "potentially bigger financial upside".

Sir, you’re the equivalent of a private pilot yelling at the flight crew for a hard landing. Leave corporate finance to the professionals and put on you white new balances and take your wife for a walk.

what are all the assets currently owned by spirit that are more than enough to recoup? I’m curious what all you’re considering as assets?

We don’t own squat- besides the headquarters, a few sims, and maybe some gates.

exactly, which is why I posed the question to friendly what were the assets he thought we had that would more than cover the lenders. We just sold most of the most of the only airplanes we own. All we have left, are what you mentioned.

There is literally a list of assets on every quarterly filing, as there will be once again for Q3.

Ok well - I haven’t looked at the quarterly filing for a list of all the assets - my question still stands to friendly. Are they enough that, if sold, make the lenders whole?

just looked at the 2q report and looked at the section you’re referring to. Interesting to see. Thanks for pointing it out

I was more referring to his post and backing up your question. Dude has no clue what he’s talking about.

oh absolutely. Maybe I didn’t word the reply right but I got what you were saying.

F9 had our earnings call today. Right before the Q&A portion, our CEO made a comment "We will not be commenting on any potential M&A in our industry". Weird thing to say instead of the typical take question and say nothing is happening.

lol. Merger Confirmed!

Meanwhile on the JBLU call, the CEO directly said they have no intention to revisit the Spirit acquisition again.

merger rumor debunked!

With Icahn in the picture over there, I'm not disappointed they don't want us....

It's a "safe bet" theory is that JetBlue is going to merge with the combined HA/AK and form a true competitor to the big 3.

My "tin foil hat" theory is that they tanked the NK merger once they got wind of this opportunity.

So they add 2 more fleet types to the mix and 3 pilot groups flying separarely? Hopefully the Alaska pilots get the SLI done with HA so that when they integrate the B6 pilots they get the credit for the WB flying. Doing a 3 party SLI sounds like an absolute mess.

And not exactly sure why they would go after JB with a market cap of 2 bill vs Spirits 274 million (over 7 times cheaper, not including the debt obviously). And Spirit at this point would be wayyy more likely to pass regualtory hurdles giving the looming ch11 and pilot furloughs via "failing firm defense".

Once America gets back on track after the election, it’s going to be a free-for-all. I believe legacies may have opportunities to grab up some airlines. Consolidation equates to stability and safety in this industry. Streamlining is key.

I think AS would be more likely to go for B6. Complimentary (east coast heavy) network, similar product culture, and less baggage.

But I'd give them five years to get HAL sorted first.

You just don't pay whatever the going market cap is and you get the planes. Its not like buying a car. If you buy Spirit you also get to take on $3B in debt and very few assets since they are all leveraged or sold and then have to carry the ongoing losses (almost $1B a year) until you can get everything integrated to get the efficiencies. Trying to do that while also figuring out how to put HA/AS together would be a mess.

Virgin/Alaska was 6 years ago and that was a much easier pill to swallow than Hawaiian will be.

The Airbus phase out is not the pill swallowing timeline. Wouldn’t it just be SOC? Synergies realized and single platform seems like the end point from a business standpoint. The measure of this merger won’t be everything Hawaiian swallowed and pooped out 737s.

I don’t think the legacies want to touch spirit. Maybe the airplanes, but not a merger, specially since they might be replacement for older airplanes. The only one that I could see trying might be AA, since that’s the way they want to stay ahead (same as when UsAir/AA merged).

I was estimating when they might have the bandwidth to even entertain another M&A. I could not see that happening in less than five years, could be even longer or never.

HAL will never be fully "digested" like a VX was, obviously too complicated.

Read the part where I said (not including debt) if you include total debt. JB has 6 billion and Spirit has 7 billion. So with market cap and debt, a 3 billion dollar difference. Just because aircraft are leased does not mean the aquiring party doesn't get them so not exactly sure why they wouldnt be considered assets? No they aren't fully paid for but a bunch of fully paid off old airbus's from 2002 in JB's cases aint exactly very valuable either. You aren't wrong abou the ongoing HA/AS stuff. Just simply pointing out spirit is a much cheaper option/value.

I don't see how legacies get even a single aircraft. If we sold off a bunch more via sale or even ch7 there are no guarantees those aircraft will stay here. They will get outbid by government subsidised carriers overseas in a heart beat.

UAL's fresh deal for 40 more 321NEOs for 2026 delivery came from somewhere.

That was just finalizing the deal that was announced months ago.

Quick question. What's the total number of pilots at NK today?

3,281 active/not currently furloughed.

Ahh ok. Thank you.

Not that it matters much but I think it is 3,252…there are 30 more furloughs scattered throughout the seniority list.

Furloughs are horrible, selling aircraft bad, and kicking the 1B loan payment down the road is meh … the earnings are about to be conservatively -250M for the last quarter. When that drops it will be full on panic. They have announced all these cost saving moves prior to earnings to cushion the blow for the kitchen sink loss quarter when it is only the worst quarter so far. Max aircraft parked for engine issues peaks end of 24 and first quarter 25. Still looking at 350 days with engine off wing for repair with no spares. A merger or buyout would be a choreographed bankruptcy with an exit plan that included a merger after renegotiated debts.

The earnings are actually a "beat" on revised estimaes, that guidance has already come out. Its a monster loss but better than previous estimates.
The company is in NO RUSH to get those planes back. They are getting a small amount of money from RTX for them being down, and they cant make money with them if they had them back tomorrow.

This just lines up for the prepackaged bankruptcy merger with Frontier

While I wouldn't want to wish anything bad on either pilot group, seeing them try this and get shot down by the DOJ would be pretty amazing (not saying it would go down that way).

Having to leave and start over midcareer at the bottom of a huge legacy list would suck, but watching TC and Bendo eat crow would at least be somewhat satisfying on the way out.

I just realized I posted this totally in the wrong spot. I for some reason, thought I was posting it here, since this IS an F9NK thread. So here it goes, with some tweaks since a little Info has changed since posting this a couple of days ago.

This is just me being bored and looking at numbers. I’m sometimes truly this bored.

According to the FFTpilot page (numbers may not be entirely accurate but it’s what I have so they are what I’ll use) by end of 2024 frontier will have 159 airplanes and around 2100-2200 pilots on property. End of 2025, frontier will have 180 planes.

Spirit has about 192 airplanes end of year if you already calculate the 23 CEOS that are now sold and will be gone by early next year. Spirit takes delivery of an additional 5 airplanes in 2025, so end of 2025 spirit has 197 airplanes not counting neo problems. Spirit has 3251 active pilots on property and just announced a 330 furlough.

Spirit runs about 16 pilots per plane, not sure how many frontier runs but with current math I’d say maybe 14 or so per plane.

spirit / frontier combined has an active pilot list of about 5359 pilots.

at the end of 2025, spirit / frontier combined will have a fleet of about 377 airplanes.

377 airplanes at fifteen pilots per plane (average of F9 at 14 per plane and NK at 16 per plane is 5655 pilots. With a combined pilot list end of 2025 of 5359 pilots (not counting attrition or most recent furlough announcement).

Now, i know those numbers don’t take into consideration the grounded spirit airplanes. But it also doesn’t take into consideration the attrition that is about to really pick back up now that hiring is coming back some. I would guess the possibility would be at least 500 pilots between the two airlines minimum for 2025. So theoretically that would put the combined groups at about 4859 pilots more or less after a guesstimated attrition. The airplane number that spirit is grounding is a very fluid number and hard to determine what it wlll be from day to day.

if you take the worse case scenario numbers - frontiers 180 airplanes and if all airplanes spirit needs to ground are grounded by end of next year, that puts spirit at about 130 airplanes end of 2025. that’s 310 airplanes at 15 pilots per plane is 4650 pilots. But like I say, the groundings are very fluid and is hard to predict.

I know we have a LOT of more senior folks that will be leaving now that legacy hiring is ramping back up. It will certainly be interesting to see how things play out.


just the two cents from someone who has nothing better to do than to look at numbers and play with their iPhone calculator.