Silver’s Plans Appear to Be Tarnished

As Spirit sails through Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and prepares to exit, fellow Florida-based airline Silver is not quite having the same luck. After a whole lot of drama, the airlines’s fleet is shrinking and it has cut back flights with no notice. Silver’s outlook is… cloudy… at best.

After Silver stopped flying for Amazon’s Prime Air in 2023, the airline had 14 aircraft flying around Florida and the Caribbean. Eight of those were ATR-42s with another six larger ATR-72s. One of the ATR-42s left the fleet in late August, and then the airline filed for bankruptcy protection on December 30, 2024.

It was supposed to be a speedy trip through bankruptcy, but there have been hiccups along the way. On January 15, the airline announced it was abruptly exiting the Anguilla market. It claimed “the government of Anguilla is asking Silver to violate US law,” thanks to the demand for payment on debts that Silver says need to be settled through the court restructuring. But that was just one of the problems facing the airline.

Since the beginning of the year, operational performance had begun to trend downward with more cancellations and fewer flights arriving on-time. It has fallen off a cliff entirely in recent days.

Silver Operational Data

^{Data via Anuvu}

What happened? Lessors want their planes back. Truenoord decided that it wanted more money from Silver to keep the three airplanes it had flying with the airline. Silver balked and parked the airplanes. Two of them were ATR-42s — N408SV and N409SV — and they were sent to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on March 2. An ATR-72, N705SV, hasn’t left Fort Lauderdale since February 27. Presumably Truenoord had more reliable lessees ready to take on the aircraft.

But Truenoord wasn’t the only problem. Silver also had not come to an agreement with Nordic Aviation Capital (NAC), so it had to send those airplanes back as well. N403SV left the fleet in mid-January and N402SV went to Orlando on February 27 and is done with the airline.

Now down to only eight aircraft, Silver was forced to make cuts. It started by abrubtly canceling all flights to and from Orlando.

^{Silver’s Florida operation via Cirium}

That means all flights in the Florida operation now touch either Tampa or Fort Lauderdale, when they operate. As that chart at top shows, the airline has canceled far too many of its flights and has very few actually operating on time, so even these cuts are not enough.

So what’s happening with the rest of the fleet? It’s chaos. As of March 5:

• N405SV (ATR-42) – actively flying in the Florida operation
• N406SV (ATR-42) – actively flying in the San Juan operation
• N407SV (ATR-42) – actively flying in the San Juan operation
• N700SV (ATR-72) – sitting in Tampa since March 1
• N702SV (ATR-72) – actively flying in the Florida operation
• N703SV (ATR-72) – was ferried to Orlando on March 5 and could be leaving the fleet since Silver is no longer flying to Orlando
• N706SV (ATR-72) – actively flying in the Florida operation
• N708SV (ATR-72) – sitting in Orlando since March 3 and could be leaving the fleet since Silver is no longer flying to Orlando

For those keeping score at home, that’s only five airplanes that are actively flying right now. It’s no wonder it can’t run on time. It must be pure chaos at the airline as it scrambled to run any semblance of an operation just in time for spring break to start. It looks like Fort Lauderdale – Key West has been canceled for the next week to try and lighten the load, but that is still an awful lot of flying to be done by 5 airplanes.

Whether this is a blip in the Chapter 11 process or the beginning of the end isn’t entirely clear. But what is clear is that if Silver survives, it’s going to be smaller than it was. And that’s only if it’s lucky.