Originally Posted by
GW McLintock
A lot of those passengers [say they] fly JB on those routes because it is nicer than the competition. Of course if a not-so-nice option at a significant discount was available, I'm sure many would be happy to switch. The classic line is, "I'm never flying Spirit again!" (until they're the cheapest)
-J.
Right before the pandemic, I flew Spirit. They had some new spiffy planes. Granted, seating space was tight, but it was a decent cabin. I just wonder why B6 would have to spend so much to retrofit all its planes to remove those seats and add seat back devices. Maybe they could operate a separate brand like JB Spirit for a number of planes intended with dense cabins, and just have to repaint the aircraft on those.
Maybe I'm too optimistic as I know a likely scenario is a complete gut of Spirit- an asset grab, and elimination of a competitor and relatively minor service increases to JetBlue in maybe LAX and SFO, while most of Spirit's network and capacity is lost turning out more anti-competitive than Southwest's acquisition of AirTran.