AI Summary
5 min readIn 2014, a passenger named RN Darling booked a ticket on Spirit Airlines for a work trip to New York City. By the time his flight arrived, he was checking the flight status every two hours for three straight days. Spirit had filed for bankruptcy for a second time and looked like it might liquidate entirely. At the airport, the staff treated his departure as a running joke. "Oh, you're flying with Spirit?" they said. "I guess I'm one of the last," he replied. RN Darling made it to his destination. Whether Spirit Airlines can make it through the week is a more open question.
The Dollar General of the Sky
In 2014, Spirit was the fastest-growing airline in America and also one of the most hated. Planet Money reporters Zoe Chase and Jacob Goldstein booked a $68.99 flight from New York to Fort Lauderdale to understand why. The experience was stripped bare: $30 to pick a seat, $50 to carry on a bag, $3 for water. The seats did not recline. There were ads on the overhead bins and on the flight attendants' aprons. "Spirit Airlines is a subway car in the sky," they concluded. One passenger whispered, "This sucks."
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:21) **The Spirit Airlines Panic** - A traveler booked a Spirit flight right as the airline appeared to be on the verge of liquidation.
- 2 (01:49) **The Rise: Spirit in 2014** - The show goes back to Spirit's heyday, when its radical low-cost model was making it the fastest-growing airline.
- 3 (03:40) **The Dollar General of the Sky** - The 2014 reporting team visits Spirit's bare-bones headquarters and meets the CEO who proudly embraces the low-frills label.
- 4 (11:41) **The Hate vs. The Choice** - Spirit is the most hated airline in America, yet its planes are full, revealing a contradiction in consumer behavior.
- 5 (16:14) **The Revenge of the Legacy Carriers** - The show pivots to explain how Spirit fell from grace, focusing on three factors that big airlines used to fight back.
- 6 (22:00) **Loyalty Programs as a Market Problem** - Economist Severin Borenstein argues that loyalty programs are a tool for legacy airlines to leverage market dominance, not offer better service.
- 7 (23:46) **The Economy Does the Rest** - The final factor is the post-pandemic economic environment, which has squeezed both budget airlines and their customers.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Today on the show, we go back in time to when Spirit was riding high and pressuring the whole industry to cut costs. We talk with then-CEO Ben Baldanza about his radical vision for cheap air travel and then travel to the present day to hear how legacy airlines beat Spirit and other budget airlines at their own game. Plus, what happens to us passengers if Spirit does go away.
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This episode of Planet Money was hosted by Greg Rosalsky, Jacob Goldstein, Zoe Chace and Emma Peaslee. It was produced by Emma Peaslee. It was edited by Alex Goldmark. It was fact-checked by Vito Emanuel and engineered by Jimmy Keeley. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money’s executive producer.
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