For an interesting exercise let's consider the lease rate between a 321 CEO and NEO. It's about an $150,000 difference. Let's also consider that a CEO may burn roughly $500 more in fuel per hour (generally the largest difference is on longer legs).

$150,000/$500 gets you 300 hours of fuel burn to break even, or 10 hours a day of usage.

That's actually pretty typical for most airlines to run their a/c at around 10 hours utilization, although some like Spirit were more in the 12-13 hours prior to Covid and things hitting the fan.

Even more importantly, the largest difference is on long legs so using cheaper CEOs on short legs like RDU-CLT isn't a terrible plan.

The problem in the US now is too much domestic capacity, so no one really needs to acquire even cheap planes save for the ones they're contracted for. But who knows, UA has boatloads of cash and buying some cheap 321's might be in their wheelhouse.

 

https://careers.spirit.com/pilots-go-further

maybe it cost too much money to take down the “Spirit is Hiring Pilots” link.

 

United already looked at the Spirit fleet and passed. United hasn't taken a used plane since pre-pandemic. There is a robust aircraft delivery pipeline and they already said they don't want or need any of the Spirit planes. Doesn't fit in with the United Next plan unfortunately and they will just go with the new deliveries.

 

Kirby was asked that question in a public forum, his answer was that it would cost too much and take approximately 12 months per airframe to convert the to United two class aircraft with galleys, in-seat power and video screens. Wasn’t worth it.

That doesn’t mean that some European, Turkish, SE Asia, etc. ULCC wouldn’t be interested.

 

Slashing routes while United and Frontier move in on their turf

 

They're obviously planning on not using that turf, one way or another.

 

Sort of makes Judge William Young seem like an ignoramus. Wasn’t preserving Spirit operations to these routes part of the rationale for his denying the merger?.

 

The beard assured everyone they would be just fine without the merger, though.

 

I did no such thing, sir. It was all Ted and Bendo's idea to lie on record just to keep their jobs a little while longer!

Sincerely, Ted's Beard

 

That’s exactly what you want us to think. You and the guitar are the true masterminds.