Anyone know what's going on with Spirit?

MarkH

MarkH

Line Up and Wait
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MarkH
They have canceled most of their flights the last couple days.

They seem to be flying today, but while Spirit is describing it as "Operational and Weather Challenges", I have read rumors of a ground crew strike, a pilot strike and a riot at SJU.

I'm 90% sure that not all of those rumors are true (and possibly not any of them), but I can't find a reliable source that says what actually happened.
 
Like most businesses today, the airline industry is struggling. Travel demand returned faster than anyone anticipated, and now airlines are short crews and aircraft to meet demand. A lot of people travelling are short on patience and tolerance, and have forgotten how to act in public, assaulting flight crews, rioting in terminals, etc. Its getting ugly, and not just for Spirit.
 
Bean counters don't like paying for staffing and infrastructure beyond what's required to run the airline when things are running smoothly, so hiccups such as weather, misjudged demand, IT problems, locusts, or whatever else can really create a cascading set of circumstances that result in operational meltdowns. All airlines are susceptible to it to some degree - even Delta had a meltdown over Easter. But it's probably more likely to happen at low cost carrier like Spirit, or a legacy carrier with a low cost carrier management team such as mine. ;)

And no, there's no pilot strike of any kind going on over there.
 
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kayoh190 said:
Bean counters don't like paying for staffing and infrastructure beyond what's required to run the airline when things are running smoothly, so hiccups such as weather, misjudged demand, IT problems, locusts, or whatever else can really create a cascading set of circumstances that result in operational meltdowns. All airlines are susceptible to it to some degree - even Delta had a meltdown over Easter. But it's probably more likely to happen at low cost carrier like Spirit, or a legacy carrier with a ULCC management team such as mine. ;)

And no, there's no pilot strike of any kind going on over there.
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ULCC ??
 
Arnold said:
I suggest that ULCC pax get what they paid for and should just shut up.
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Not really. All airlines are pretty much understaffed and overworked due to poor management decisions. It’s not unique to Spirit. At Delta we botched Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. We finally got it right by Memorial Day. But those other holidays, we had to cancel hundreds of flights due to crew staffing. Our hold times for reservations are 8+ hours. All the airlines are struggling.
 
jordane93 said:
Not really. All airlines are pretty much understaffed and overworked due to poor management decisions. It’s not unique to Spirit. At Delta we botched Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. We finally got it right by Memorial Day. But those other holidays, we had to cancel hundreds of flights due to crew staffing. Our hold times for reservations are 8+ hours. All the airlines are struggling.
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An article I read yesterday described it perfectly. When the pandemic hit, most airline management believed this would be a U-shaped downturn and recovery like most major disruptions have been historically. They downsized crews and fleets through retirements and attrition to cut losses long term. However the downturn was more V-shaped than U shaped, and the recovery has happened faster than anyone could have ever predicted. So many of the crew that retired are gone forever, and replacements are months and/or years away. Aircraft need to be returned from storage or out right replaced, something that will again take months. No one expected to see passenger numbers near normal levels in just over 15 months. Most estimates I saw a year ago said 24-36 months best case scenario.
 
midwestpa24 said:
An article I read yesterday described it perfectly. When the pandemic hit, most airline management believed this would be a U-shaped downturn and recovery like most major disruptions have been historically. They downsized crews and fleets through retirements and attrition to cut losses long term. However the downturn was more V-shaped than U shaped, and the recovery has happened faster than anyone could have ever predicted. So many of the crew that retired are gone forever, and replacements are months and/or years away. Aircraft need to be returned from storage or out right replaced, something that will again take months. No one expected to see passenger numbers near normal levels in just over 15 months. Most estimates I saw a year ago said 24-36 months best case scenario.
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Yea. I said the whole time, most travel will be back in a year and half. I was skeptical of getting furloughed because it didn’t make sense to furlough 2500 pilots just to bring us back in less than a year to get ready for the summer surge. A lot of airlines sidelined too many pilots and were caught with their pants down. Now they have to somehow hire record amounts of pilots and put them through training while they also let go of half of their instructors during COVID. So not only do they have to train pilots, but they also have to train instructors. Not sure how’s it’s going to work. But what do I know. I’m just the knuckle dragger who pushes buttons:)
 
jordane93 said:
Not really. All airlines are pretty much understaffed and overworked due to poor management decisions. It’s not unique to Spirit. At Delta we botched Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. We finally got it right by Memorial Day. But those other holidays, we had to cancel hundreds of flights due to crew staffing. Our hold times for reservations are 8+ hours. All the airlines are struggling.
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I agree, all airlines have terrible management. The difference is ULCC have no interline agreements so can't accommodate pax on other carriers. You get what you pay for. By saving $30 each way they got stuck.
 
midwestpa24 said:
Like most businesses today, the airline industry is struggling. Travel demand returned faster than anyone anticipated, and now airlines are short crews and aircraft to meet demand. A lot of people travelling are short on patience and tolerance, and have forgotten how to act in public, assaulting flight crews, rioting in terminals, etc. Its getting ugly, and not just for Spirit.
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Spirit has plenty of crews, that isn’t the issue.
Simply put, What they don’t have is enough back office staff to deal with a large Irregular Operation (IROP), (weather, mechanicals, etc.), since they cut HQ to the bone, and haven’t been able to hire and train enough at their low pay rates to cover the huge uptick in schedule.

This has led to long delays solving problems brought on by weather, and other things, like not communicating with the contract stations, leaving them in the dark with no info.

Contracted staff in a few places said “Enough! I’m not getting paid enough to deal with this schit!” and walked off the job, especially in San Juan, and it inspired other contract workers serving Spirit to walk away in other places, especially “Above the wing” front line folks, who are sick of dealing with the anger and games of Spirit’s particular passenger base.

These are folks who can both pass a background check AND a drug screen, making them a valuable commodity in today’s employment market.
 
jordane93 said:
Yea. I said the whole time, most travel will be back in a year and half. I was skeptical of getting furloughed because it didn’t make sense to furlough 2500 pilots just to bring us back in less than a year to get ready for the summer surge. A lot of airlines sidelined too many pilots and were caught with their pants down. Now they have to somehow hire record amounts of pilots and put them through training while they also let go of half of their instructors during COVID. So not only do they have to train pilots, but they also have to train instructors. Not sure how’s it’s going to work. But what do I know. I’m just the knuckle dragger who pushes buttons:)
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Most carriers managed to keep a good portion of the pilots, after all, no pilots means no planes flying. They did that by butchering the back offices, and the stations. The contracted employees don’t work for Spirit, and are tired of actually getting beaten for Spirit’s operational failures. Can’t say that I blame them.

Now they have pilots and planes, but not enough people to deal with the issues that always arise. This is not the first time that Spirit has lost complete operational control of the airline during summer peak. It happened in 2015, but they were half the size then.

American had an operational meltdown this weekend as well, due to the storms, but they were able to rebuild the schedule and recover from it in two days.
 
And here I thought Spirit was doing their passengers a favor by not flying. ;)
 
A good friend is a senior Captain at Spirit. He says the issue is the same as Southwest and American are having. Passenger loads and sold flights exceed their ability to crew those flights. The industry didn’t anticipate rebounding this quickly after Covid.
 
I would not want to be an airline executive right now. With Covid-19 variants shifting and multiplying there is no way to make a confident prediction even 6 months out. ULCCs are just city buses with wings and without the urine odor. And that is fine if all you can afford is a bus. Even legacy major's are headed towards the low cost model. I'll still take a day of hand flying Lady Luscombe to Asheville and arrive exhausted rather than any airline and arrive angry/sick/stressed.
 
kayoh190 said:
It's a quote from the movie "Airplane!"
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Specifically, from "Jack Kilpatrick", heartless libertarian commentator, to "Shana Alexander", bleeding heart liberal. A 60minutes set piece.
 
If its anything like SY then its cause the ground service folks cant staff DGS, swissport etc have such massive turnover and you cant hire criminals cause they need sida badges. Why sling bags or take abuse from pax as a gate agent for 12-14 bucks an hour. Or you can work at target for 15 bucks an hour and deal with non of that. I had a 45 min delay on delta cause they didnt have a gate agent. Ive sat in msp on Endeavor for 35 min right off the gate cause there's no rampers. Everyones new, ground staff is short, irops destroy the house of cards the second they hit. Schedules are so tight cause planes gotta run 12 hrs a day to make money that a 30 min delay cascades throughout the day.
 
Stewartb said:
A good friend is a senior Captain at Spirit. He says the issue is the same as Southwest and American are having. Passenger loads and sold flights exceed their ability to crew those flights. The industry didn’t anticipate rebounding this quickly after Covid.
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I agree that American is having just as many problems and a lot of it is their own doing. We were booked on a non stop from JFK to Barcelona this coming October on American. They have changed the flight significantly 3 times dive we booked it a month and a half ago. The latest change added two layovers and 12 hours to our trip. After waiting 8 hours to talk to a customer service rep the said we qualified for a refund but had to do it online. Did that and got an email the next day saying the refund was denied. Next up is a DOT complaint as I’m not being stuck with $1600 in airfare for a flight that isn’t even close to what we booked. I have flown both Southwest and Delta over the past year with zero issues.
 
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