Is Spirit Airlines On The Brink Of Collapse?

Is Spirit Airlines on the brink of collapse? Air Travel and Market Analyst Jay Ratliff discusses the airline's future, another near miss, and some holiday travel tips.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Back now here on the Ryan Gorman Show, and let's
go to the hotline and bring in our aviation analyst,
Jay Ratliff is with us, and Jay, we have quite
a few things to talk about this morning, and let
me start with some of these rumors surrounding Spirit Airlines.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
This last weekend, Ryan, we were hearing reports from all
around competitors, people in the industry, analysts on Wall Street
saying that Spirit Airlines isn't even going to make it
through the weekend. They were going to shut everything down. Well,
obviously we got through the weekend that did not take place,
but obviously there is a concern because Spirit is having

(00:37):
some serious financial issues, and right now we know that
they're hurting. So the real question I'm getting from a
lot of individuals is, in the unlikely event that Spirit
does just suddenly cease operations, if I'm a passenger, what
could I do and how does all of this work?
So right now we know that Spirit has about three
thousand flights this week that are scheduled to operate, and then,

(01:00):
of course, after the end of this week, we get
into the last two weeks of the year, which is
the typical busy holiday travel season where we're going to
have some increased numbers, a lot more full flight, newer
options if we have any sort of irregular operation that
might end up taking place. So if you're a passenger
with spared airlines and for some reason douce seat or

(01:20):
cancel the reservation that you're on, the problem is that
if you pay for it by credit card, yes, you
can contest and get that money back if the services
were not provided for ryan. The real problem is what
options are you going to have during a busy holiday
travel season at the last minute to get to your destination,
or if you're there coming back and you know sadly

(01:41):
what would happen would be you'd be forced if you're
flying back, you'd be forced to buy a ticket on
another carrier at a not so discounted price, and that
would end up costing a great deal of money if
the seats were available. We do know that several airlines
and Spirit competing markets have already planned that if there
is any sort of Spirit travel disrupting, they're going to

(02:02):
be bringing in extra flights, larger aircraft to try to
help airlift people out of a lot of these areas.
But I tell you, for a time when passengers just
want to enjoy the holidays. A lot of individuals that
I've talked to are very, very worried about their future
travel plans. And obviously we'll keep a close eye on
it and I'll be at your disposal is needed, and

(02:23):
hopefully the rumors are just that we can get through
the busy holiday season without any abruptions and travel at all.
We're joined by our aviation analyst, Jay Ratliffe and while
we're talking holiday travel, what can we expect this time
of the year and how does it differ from what
we just went through during the Thanksgiving holiday. Well, Thanksgiving

(02:43):
is different because you have all of that busy travel
time crammed into just a few hectic travel days. The
busiest day of travel, as you and I've discussed so
many times before over the years, is the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
The second busiest travel day of the entire year is
the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. You've got all these passengers that
are flying in between, and yes, we have the busiest

(03:04):
day we've ever seen this past Sunday after Thanksgiving. Now
the end of the year holidays from let's say the
nineteenth of December coming up on Friday through maybe the third,
fourth or fifth of January is over more than a
two two and a half week period of time. So
what's going to happen is it allows us to kind
of send that concentrated demand for travel to a lesser extent.

(03:28):
And look, it's still going to be busy. Flights are
still going to be packed, we're still going to need
to get to the airport two hours in advance. But
absent of any technical issues with airlines and computers or
any real bad weather, we should see all hands on
deck and they should get through it pretty well. That's
obviously what we're hoping for. But you know, we tend
to have fewer people traveling per day on average the

(03:50):
last two weeks of the year than what we have
per day through the busy Thanksgiving travel week, And certainly
this this time of year became a nice because it's
the sad could deserve a little bit of break with
what they've been going through of late with a lot
of people who've been traveling, and the first two weeks
of December tenth of the collective sigh of relief because
it's the flower two weeks, and then of course everything

(04:12):
hits the band this Friday, as we begin the very
busy Christmas flash end of the year of holidays travel season,
we're going to see a lot of people heading to
the airport.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
Anything. People who are traveling should remember any tips that
you have to make sure that things go as smoothly
as possible.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
This year, well, I think probably the biggest thing. If
you've not flown for a while, go to TSA dot
gov and they've got hit hints, hip videos, different types
of things you can use to acquaint yourself with maybe
how things are different now at the secarity tech point
than what you had before. Obviously, at the end of
the year, we always have people bringing fireworks to the

(04:50):
destination they're going to, but we call those explosives. We
don't let them on the plane. I don't want anything
taken away from you, to leave it at home. If
you're worried about the charging apparatus on board the aircraft,
if you're going to have a device that needs to
be charged, you can go to flight guru or excuse me,
sekguru dot com and at seakguru dot com it's the

(05:10):
freesite you put in your airline and flight number and
a very nice color coded cart or of the aircraft
popped up and it shows you if you're in a
just a hirable seat or not, does it reclined, does
it have power? All these different kinds of things, and
it's a great resource to have. Now keep in mind
that TSA just this month is an issue to advisory one.

(05:32):
If you're at an airport, you need to charge your phone,
please use your own charging device. We've seen at airport
some of these collective almost airport kind of provided type
of things where people can go to this community thing
and just plug in and use the charger. But what
we're finding is some people have actually hacked into those
and they're using that as an apparatus to gain personal

(05:52):
information from people's bones that are connected as they're being charged.
So please try to avoid that if you can. The
second thing that the TSA has told us is that
the connecting to the Wi Fi at some of these
airports you have to be very careful because some of
these are not secured networks, and we have people that
obviously as we travel, we're exhausted, and you know you've

(06:13):
got all that the hectic pace of the airport, you
kind of let your guard down and sometimes you might
find yourself signing into one of these unsecured sites, and
we've already seen reports of people that have had their
personal information taken from being in on those So I
know that's a lot to absorb if you're going to
be traveling over the next couple of weeks. But I
think those reminders are good and certainly timely as that

(06:36):
way you don't have any unpleasant surprises you're going through
the holiday.

Speaker 1 (06:40):
Absolutely. We're joined by our aviation analyst, Jay Ratlif Jay.
One last thing I want to talk to you about
this Jet Blue flight that had to dodge potential mid
air collision with the US military refueling tanker. This happened
near Venezuela. What do we know about that incident?

Speaker 2 (06:56):
Hereto is the island that's down there near Venezuela. And
you had a Jet Blue flight that was taking off
and off it went climbing to it approved altitude and
they had to pain that approach because they were in
close proximity to the US military aircraft. It was one
of those large taker aircraft, and the debt Blue pilot

(07:18):
told air traffic control said, hey, look we had to
stop our climb because we had this US Air Force
jet that entered into our flight path the same altitude,
directly in front of us.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
There's things.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
They were about five thousand feet aparts, which that is
the separation we want to have, but they were closing fast,
so Jet Blue had to take you know, evasive acting
and avoided a mid air collision is being called, but
I have to put that in quotes because they weren't
literally on top of each other. But Ryan, when you're

(07:48):
flying at that speed, it is long to close five
thousand feet. So the FAA is investigating right now to
see why this aircraft there wasn't better communication. But we've
already received a note them to notice the air missions,
that is from the FAA telling pilots look, exercise extream
content when you're flying around the airspace of Venezuela, because

(08:09):
we have an increased number of non identified aircraft operations
and you've actually seen some airlines scale back some of
their scheduled service because they don't want to put their
aircraft to flight and passengers and crew members in a
farms way. And certainly this is a wake up call
and why that advisory is so critical. This just happened
to be a US flight but there's other type of

(08:31):
military aircraft that have been in the area as well
that the US flight crews and other airline pilots have
to be aware of because it is a very unstable situation.
We've seen this to different places around the world before.
When you have the military operations ramp up and you've
got hostilities, it's very, very dangerous, and that's one of
the reasons that the advisory is out there, and I'm

(08:53):
sure get Blue and others will take the appropriate measures
to make sure their aircraft are out of harm's way
in the future.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
And market analyst Jay Ratliffe with us for the final
time in twenty twenty five. You can check them out
online at Daytrade fund dot com. Jay can thank you
enough for all the tremendous reports on all things markets
and aviation throughout the year, and we look forward to
talking to you again in twenty twenty six.

Speaker 2 (09:17):
It could be an exciting year, brother, I'm looking forward
to it.