September has always been a bad month for leisure airlines. That’s the first full month after kids are back in school, and it’s when almost nobody is flying to the disgustly-swampy, occassionally-hurricaney land of Florida. In reality, people aren’t doing much leisure travel at all that month, so leisure airlines do what they can to stem the bleeding. Airlines can hide this to some extent since they announce quarterly results and this is paired with July and August. But not all airlines can do that, especially when that airline filed for bankruptcy protection at the end of August.
Now that Spirit is back in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, it has to submit a monthly operating report. September is out, and ooo-boy is it bad.
Spirit September 2025 Operating Loss Breakdown
Data via Spirit
For those keeping score at home, this is a -52 percent operating margin. Sweet sassy molassy that is very, very bad. Even if you ditch the $9.6 million on loss of disposal of assets, you’re still at a -48 percent op margin. There is no sugarcoating this result, but there is some explaining that will help ease the shock and provide a smidgen of hope for the future.
This was a far cry from August where the airline had a mere -15.5 percent operating margin. Expenses weren’t all that different, but revenue sure was. August saw operating revenues of $337 million versus $257 million in September. You might think with such a big 24 percent decline in revenue from August to September, capacity was down a lot too. RIGHT?! Oh, capacity was down, of course, but it was down only 11.8 percent. That means unit revenue dropped from 9.3 cents to 8.1 cents. So much bleeding.
And let’s be clear that even a 9.3 cent unit revenue figure isn’t good enough in this airline, because it still generated a -15.5 percent margin in what should be a moderately-strong month. That is hugely problematic in its own right, but it is nothing compared to what September turned out.
Put this another way, in the month of September alone, Spirit burned through $90 million in cash. It ended the month with just over $250 million in cash and cash equivalents, so, well, you can see why it desperately needed to raise funding quickly in bankruptcy, as it did.
A few more months like September, and it’ll be easy to blow through any of the money it’s been able to raise. The good news is it shouldn’t have more months like September. September was something of a perfect storm. Sure, there is the fact that it is a slow month, but that is just the icing on the garbage cake.
Remember, Spirit filed for bankruptcy protection at the end of August, and there was a lot of doom and gloom out there publicly. Book-away is a very real thing when people think airlines aren’t going to survive for long. There’s no question that September would have seen the worst of that. That is, after all, before any of the massive slashing and cutting began. Here is a look at filed schedules:
Spirit Average Daily ASMs by Month
Data via Cirium
So, September is the weakest month of the year, but as you can see it had a lot of capacity compared to future months. The network slashing began in earnest in the October schedule, but it really won’t hit fully until we see November results.
In the meantime, Spirit’s prospects for mid-term survival improved as it cut costs, nailed down debtor-in-possession financing, and the doom-and-gloom media coverage died down. Perhaps that means people wll starting booking again in greater numbers. Maybe they already have. Still, it would be hard to imagine it getting worse.
If there’s one thing clear from September, it’s that when people think you as an airline are not going to survive, they are more than happy to book elsewhere. For Spirit’s sake, let’s hope this is as bad as it gets. Even if it is, there is still a pretty steep hole that it needs to get out of to become viable.
