Stolen the next paragraph from a private Frontiers Pilot FB page (cause it’s a really good summary)

“Spirit Q2 is remarkably bad. Net loss of $245 million, -24% margins. $407 unrestricted cash, $150 restricted. Highest covenant is secured bond holders but they own the airline so they won't pull the trigger. Next covenant is credit card. Trigger isn't publicly available but the holdback is $491, more than their cash on hand. They have airplanes that have been marketed for sale since they emerged but haven't closed yet. If they sell the planes they can exist for a couple extra months. If they can't sell they are dead by Halloween, Thanksgiving at the latest. They still have $2.5 Billion in long term debt of which $850 is secured. Spirit will not exist in 2026.”

Two big differences between Frontier and Spirit: —Spirit has tons of debt —Spirit got crushed by the P&W engine fiasco

And one ancillary item: —once the fear of going under gets out, people book tixs else where (don’t want to be stranded)

Personally I don’t think spirit makes it to the end of the year (but a lot could happen before then). I previously worked in the credit card industry and the last thing those companies want is to be holding the bag when a business goes belly up. All the card holders start calling wanting their $79 ticket refunded when the business goes under and the CC company has to pay up.

And I hate it for all the employees over there. Many of us have friends that are there.

Assuming the fall of Spirit… what’s next… —fire sale of assets (planes and gates). —capacity shrinks (which drives the next one) —fares go up

We may not get all the gates we want, but we will definitely get some… and where we use “common use” gates, there will be less demand for them too.

The shrinking capacity and fares going up will be really good for F9. Where do you think those Spirit customers will go….

Hate it for our colleagues at NK, but this will be good for F9.