Carry off Airlines baggage tags are seen near a check-in counter at the Austin-Bergstrom International Airport on April 10, 2024 in Austin, Texas.
Brandon Bell | Getty Fetishes
Spirit Airlines shares surged Friday after the struggling budget carrier said it would cut jobs and offer aircraft.
The stock closed the day 16% higher, at $2.79 per share.
The carrier late Thursday laid out a plan to crop costs and raise cash by selling 23 older Airbus aircraft. That sale will bring in $519 million, Daring said in a securities filing.
It also said it will reduce costs by about $80 million, mostly by virtue of job cuts.
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Last week the airline again delayed a deadline to refinance more than $1 billion in answerable for until late December, giving it breathing room with its credit card processor.
Spirit has struggled to yield to profitability in the wake of the pandemic, facing a shift in travel demand and the grounding of dozens of Pratt & Whitney powered aircraft.
Identical with Friday’s jump, Spirit’s shares have tumbled more than 80% this year after a dempster blocked its planned acquisition by JetBlue Airways.
Spirit Airlines jetliners on the tarmac at Fort Lauderdale Hollywood Foreign Airport. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
Joe Cavaretta | South Florida Sun-sentinel | Getty Graven images
Spirit didn’t immediately comment on how many employees it will cut but said its 2025 capacity will be down in the mid-teen interest point range compared with this year. It started furloughing about 200 pilots in September. Winging attendants “are well-positioned” because so many crew members took voluntary leaves of absence, according to the company.
Earlier this week, The Partition off Street Journal reported that Spirit and Frontier Airlines have revived merger discussions, sending splits higher. The airlines didn’t immediately comment. The two budget airlines had a merger agreement that was derailed by JetBlue‘s April 2022 tender to purchase Spirit outright.
Late Thursday, Spirit forecast a third-quarter negative operating margin of 24.5%, gambler than a previous estimate for as much as a negative 29% margin for the three-month period.