A campaign to buy the Spirit Airlines after their collapse last night has reached $22m pledged from 36k people in 11hrs
Posted by BreakingFace@reddit | aviation | View on Reddit | 11 comments
Website has currently paused pledges due to the overwhelming response with a promise to be back up in 24-48hrs.
This started as a joke in an instagram reel from a guy who flew on Spirit for 24hrs straight in August of last year.
Cash burn at the company was reportedly $30mn per month in February per airinsight.com and shutting down will only make comingback online more expensive, hence the high 1.75bn target listed on their site. So it’s an absolute long shot.
HuskerDont241@reddit
$22M? Spirit sold two gates at ORD a few months ago for $30M….
SubjectiveAssertive@reddit
Spirit is probably more valuable as slots than as an airline
So good luck to them
CollegeStation17155@reddit
And unfortunately, 22M is a drop in the bucket even on a "beak it up fire sale" value.
tvlkidd@reddit
22m doesn’t even cover their credit card reserves
hobbseltoff@reddit
No idea if Spirit leased or bought their aircraft/engines, but 22 million is MAYBE the cost of two PW1100G engines for one of their aircraft.
BreakingFace@reddit (OP)
Yep, based on February’s reported cash burn of 30mn, half a month not including having to completely restart operations lol.
But it’ll be interesting to see where it lands once the site’s back up. From what I saw the first ~7hrs got to 8mn pledged and the last 4hr is what jumped it up to 23mn before breaking the site.
This one I’m less sure of my memory on, but I think I saw the video where he launched the site jump from ~400k to 1.1mn views where it’s currently at in about the same time.
geringoncas@reddit
A co-op airline would be an interesting experiment. Employees should be able to incorporate a company, seek financing and resume operations under a new company. It is a win-win situation.
Back then my grandpa, a lawyer in Brazil, was a bankruptcy trustee. He became famous because in 3 cases he was assigned to sell assets to pay debt (mostly with employees) but while looked to scrap buyers was able to save companies through employees co-operatives.
Johnthegaptist@reddit
Why would anyone donate money to a for profit enterprise? Their business model didn't survive, they need to go away, thats how our economic model is supposed to work.
Andreas1120@reddit
Has debt is 6.8billion
Kanyiko@reddit
Ah, so they might actually be able to lease slots for one of the airline's routes for the next month, and perhaps buy some fuel with what remains. Enough to reach the runway from the gates, by current prices.
I hate to say it, but if they've raised $22 million, they're only running at least about $4.8 billion short. By the time they reach $50 million, they'll still be running $4.8 billion short.
Dead in the water, this.
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