Spirit Airlines plans to furlough a further 330 pilots early next year as it navigates a period of severe financial turbulence.
Miramar, Florida-based Spirit said on 31 October that the furloughs – effective on 31 January – come amid broad “cost-savings initiatives, including a reduction in workforce, as part of our comprehensive plan to return to profitability”.
“These decisions are never made lightly, and we are committed to treating all affected team members with the utmost care and respect during this process,” Spirit says.
The latest series of pilot furloughs comes after Spirit disclosed in August that it was deferring deliveries of new Airbus jets, furloughing about 240 pilots and downgrading 100 captains to first officers. The carrier also started offering unpaid time off to flight attendants and suspended new flight crew recruiting, among other cost-cutting measures.
More recently, Spirit reached an agreement to sell 23 of its older Airbus A320-family jets to GA Telesis, boosting its liquidity by about $225 million. And the carrier has been trimming unprofitable routes from its network, resulting in drastically reduced passenger capacity in the months ahead.
The company is expecting a 20% year-on-year capacity decrease in the fourth quarter, and for its capacity to be down in the “mid-teens” percentage range year on year for 2025.
Spirit says it has identified $80 million in annual cost reductions that it plans to implement early next year, driven “primarily by a reduction in workforce commensurate with the company’s expected flight volume”.
Spirit employed 3,561 pilots at the end of 2023.
Amid Spirit’s financial difficulties, the carrier is reportedly considering revisiting a potential acquisition by Frontier Airlines, and airline analysts say financial restructuring through bankruptcy may also be an option.
