I'm sure it's good for executive compensation and they'll try to use it to motivate employees just like ValuJet did (back in the days when people thought company stock could make them rich as just a regular employee...ENRON was a wake-up call there).

From a CUSTOMER perspective, though, I lean toward it being a bad thing. Wall Street tends to pressure toward short-term profits and a no-stone-unturned mentality with fees-for-everything, which we're seeing an awful lot of with Spirit. You can also expect constant comparisons among analysts in profitability between the ULCCs, even though there are myriad ways to make a quarter look good (like deferring a refleeting) where you trade the long term for the short term.

A notable difference between Frontier and Spirit is that the former has an elite program that takes the worst edges off the ULCC experience for the most-frequent flyers, while the latter resists forgoing any fee revenue from anyone and doesn't value loyalty much at all. The Wall Street types have ruined businesses before (remember Yahoo Auctions?) by pressuring changes that management should have resisted but didn't. They're also notorious for rewarding short-term thinking and punishing longer-term moves.

Fortunately there's a model in the industry in Southwest that's so far resisted constant pressure from Wall Street to impose baggage and other fees and be more like the legacy carriers. It's because they're NOT like that that a lot of people, especially families on vacation, will fly them. But it takes a strong management to stand against the pressure, and frankly those doing the pressure might not know or care much about the company or industry.

What say u? Good thing or beginning of the end?