Spirit ‘learning’ from its operational meltdown

Spirit Airlines executives say they learned much from the airline’s operational woes last summer, and that they will add staff and cut routes to prevent recurrences. During an 11-day stretch in August, the Miramar, Florida-headquartered ultra-low-cost airline cancelled nearly 3,000 flights because of inclement weather and other factors, creating an operational meltdown that threw its schedule into disarray. On the worst of those days, Spirit cancelled half its scheduled flights. Hundreds more left late and thousands of passengers were left stranded. The disruption cost the carrier about $50 million. “We are not pleased with our operational performance in this instance, but we have a proven record of reliable operations,” CE Ted Christie says on the company’s quarterly webcast on 28 October. “It was a tremendous stress on our resources.” Spirit blamed the issues on “weather, system outages and staffing shortages that caused widespread irregularities in our operation and impacted crew scheduling”. Leisure-travel demand skyrocketed during summer, rebounding from pandemic lows unexpectedly quickly and taking airline managers by surprise. <br/>