Spirit Airlines is thinking smaller under new CE

Under former CE Ben Baldanza, Spirit Airlines almost always went big. That was the case in advertising. It was also the case with the airline’s network, as Spirit has been chasing cost-sensitive customers in the largest US markets. And it was true with airplanes, with Spirit returning its smallest planes to lessors as it added newer Airbus aircraft with more than 200 seats. But under CE Bob Fornaro, the former Air Tran CE who took over in January, Spirt is evolving. It’s still a no-frills ULCC and it continues to make a major chunk of its revenues from fees. And it’s still flying a lot big aircraft between major cities. But increasingly, Spirit is thinking smaller. It plans to grow capacity by 18.5% next year, which, while far more than American, United and Delta, is much less than the 30% capacity Spirit added in 2015. <br/>