If you happen to be around the Fort Lauderdale airport and hear a grinding sound, don’t worry. It’s not an airplane’s mechanical problem. It’s just Spirit Airlines deciding to effectively grind its growth plans to a halt next year. This is understandable but concerning news for the airline.
Spirit announced yesterday that it would defer all new airplanes scheduled to be delivered from second quarter 2025 all the way through the end of 2026 (except for two “direct lease” airplanes which will still come in) until the 2030-2031 timeframe. You can just assume this counts as “some random time in the future that we’ll agree on down the line if we’re both in business.” The airplanes set to be delivered in 2027-2029 will come as planned for now. Spirit is not extending leases on other aircraft — at least not according to its fleet plan — so it can try to keep capacity growth up even without new airplanes. This really is slowing to zero.
Data via Spirit Airlines and estimates
This chart above is based on the numbers Spirit gave through 2025 in its public fleet guidance. The deferrals in 2025 are based on the change from the fleet plan the airline published just two months ago on February 8.
The 2026 numbers are my best guess based on the information I was able to cobble together. We do know that Spirit won’t take any deliveries that year, but what we don’t know is exactly how many airplanes the airline previously expected to have delivered that year. So take those estimates for what they’re worth.
The more interesting chart is probably this one which shows Spirit’s fleet growth by year going back to 2011 and running until 2026.
Spirit Fleet Size at Year-End by Fleet Type
Data via Spirit Airlines SEC Filings
Spirit, like most ultra low cost carriers, is built for growth. It takes on a lot of new, expensive airplanes and flies them as hard as it reliably can. You can see a steady growth pattern dating all the way back to 2011 with only a minor slowdown at the start of the pandemic.
This growth brings in a lot of new employees who get paid less than more senior employees, so the airline can keep costs down overall. This isn’t any new kind of strategy. Southwest used this for decades when it was in hyper-growth mode, but that phase always come to an end at some point.
The problem now is that even if growth doesn’t slow down, there are already cost headwinds that didn’t exist in the old days. First, there’s the high price of fuel which is no cheaper for low-cost carriers. Then there’s the price of employees which has skyrocketed, especially for pilots as the shortage pushed wages up. There has been a lot of downward pressure on fares as well. With all this, United CEO Scott Kirby has pushed to change the ULCC moniker to LMA… low-margin airlines. (Nice try.)
Now with Spirit deferring all these airplanes, its problems become worse. It needs fewer new, cheaper employees. In fact, it said it was actually going to have to furlough 260 pilots after the peak summer season. I didn’t think we’d be hearing the “f” word so soon, but here we are.
You might be wondering… why is Spirit doing this if it’s going to make things worse? Well, it’s all about the only thing that matters in this industry: cash.
Spirit continues to lose money, and while it has some cash, it has a whole lot of debt maturing soon, so it needs to get its house in order fast. It is making progress. First, the airline settled with Pratt & Whitney for all the engine issues. That will put another $150 to $200 million in the tank this year and take some pressure off.
Now, this agreement with Airbus will save the airline from having to fork over $340 million to take delivery of those airplanes. You know Airbus isn’t sad. It hasn’t had delivery slots available for awhile, so it can now make some other airlines very happy.
Meanwhile, Spirit continues to flail in its bid to keep its head above water. With the growth engine turned off, it needs to focus on getting those revenues up to cover those costs… which will continue to be under pressure. It’s not an enviable place to be when you’ve historically make your money by offering low fares.
