Spirit Air surges most in four years after curbing growth plans

Spirit Airlines is pulling back on the torrid expansion that helped place them at the center of an industry fare war in recent months, sending the discount carrier’s shares surging the most in four years. Spirit will limit its growth of flights and seats to as little as 10% in 2019, executives said Thursday. As part of the slowdown, the airline is holding off deciding whether to order new Airbus aircraft to fuel future flying, CFO Ted Christie said Thursday. The carrier is also studying whether to extend the leases of some planes in its fleet as it works to keep growth to the “low to mid double-digit” range, he said. Spirit plans to expand by 22 to 25% in 2018. Capacity growth is a critical part of how a low-fare airline like Spirit keeps expenses low, with costs spread across more seats. Christie said Spirit is confident that slowing expansion won’t hurt its cost structure much. “Aircraft growth is not the only knob that the airline has available to it,” he said. The slower expansion, coupled with an apparent easing of low-fare skirmishing among airlines, sent Spirit up as much as 14%, the most since October 2013. Christie said Spirit’s 2017 capacity growth of 16% was “artificially depressed” by about three percentage points because of disruptions from hurricanes and a pilot labor action in the spring, and problems with the Pratt & Whitney engines on its new Airbus A320neo family aircraft that limited their use.<br/>