Spirit on the Brink?

Time is a flat circle. Sometimes Spirit is filing for bankruptcy. Sometimes it’s getting a plan approved to exit bankruptcy. And sometimes it’s reported by reliable sources that the airline is on the bring of liquidation. Is it true? Check back next Friday and we’ll see.

Spirit told CNBC in a statement that it doesn’t “comment on market rumors and speculation,” which, well, what fun is that? There’s a whole cottage industry built on market rumors and speculation, and they’re really missing out.

Pilots and FAs made concessions back to the carrier to help it survive. Spirit, popular amongst budget travelers and those heading to Florida (that’s a Venn Diagram that’s almost 100% overlap) is on the back end of Spring Break, and is looking down the barrel at a challenging spring and summer with gas prices costing more per gallon that Spirit charges for many of its base fares.

While it seems like it’s a matter of when — and not if — Spirit shuts down, anything is possible. Well almost anything, it’s not like American and United would ever merge, right?

Scott Kirby’s Latest Plan for World Domination

What if Coke and Pepsi merged? Or GEICO and Progressive? What about Marriott and Hilton? Seems unlikely, no? Not in the mind of United CEO Scott Kirby who floated the idea this week that his carrier could absorb its peskiest rivAAl, to create a super airline that combines the unreliability of American and the proud Newark base of United to spawn the most unmanageable blob of an airline since…well, since Texas Air acquired Continental in the ’80s.

Is Kirby serious? Maybe. Probably not. But maybe. What’s he really at here? Is it that he really wants JetBlue and is laying the ground for that by pushing this so a JetBlue acquisition doesn’t seem so crazy? Brett and friends said on The Air Show that is one active theory. Another is that Scott Kirby truly, down to his core, actually believes that there’s only room for two dominant U.S. carriers, and this is the quickest way to settle that.

DOT Makes Decision on Chicago/ORD Deescalation

The battle between American and United at Chicago/ORD finally had some sense knocked into it by — gasp — the federal government. The DOT ruled that about 300 flights per day needed to be cut from the airport’s peak summer schedule to give it even a prayer of maintaining any operational reliability.

“What’s operational reliability?” asked American upon hearing the ruling from the government, while United smugly accepted the ruling while secretly wishing the government would force it to reduce flying to Newark again too.

Nearly 3,100 flights were planned on peak days this summer, a 15% jump from a year ago. The maximum the government will permit this summer is 2,708, which is still more than last year’s 2,680.

When hearing that 300 flights needed to be reduced, AA and UA network planning teams got together and emerged early this morning with a new plan. They say that if Delta and Frontier cut about 25 flights per day, Aeromexico, Air Canada, Porter, WestJet, Viva, and Volaris go down to one flight a day, all other international carriers just pull out of the airport, and then assuming Spirit goes under, that should get them to the 300 flights cut without either AA or UA having to eliminate anything.

Lufthansa Looks for Savings, Shuts Down CityLine

Lufthansa will be adjusting its operation in reaction to rising oil prices and their mess of a labor situation as summer approaches. It’s a bold strategy, because everyone knows you can’t cancel flights if they’ve already been taken off the schedule. It’s calling it “capacity discipline,” which is corporate for “we checked the math and yikes.”

It also will reduce capacity in a very efficient and very German three-step plan:

• Removal of Lufthansa CityLine forever
• Retirement of its last four A340-600s and the grounding of two B747-400s by the end of summer
• Additional capacity reduction for the 26/27 winter

CityLine is, er, was a regional subsidiary of Lufthansa and it was already set to be wound down next year and replaced by the wildly differently named Lufthansa City. But this abrupt change will end all CityLine service as of tomorrow, April 18. All CityLine employees will be laid off and are expected to be offered jobs at other LH subsidiaries, at a dramatically reduced salary, we’re sure.

But wait, there’s more! LH also will move up the transfer of nine A350-900s to low-cost operator Discover, while also vowing to find other savings through the reduction of admin costs and increasing revenue streams, including charging a €3 fare to board a bus when arriving at a remote stand in Frankfurt. Passengers electing not to pay the fee will have to find their own way to the terminal from the remote stand.

Spirit Told to Pay Up to TSA

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled that Spirit could no longer get away with being a cheapskate and holding on to passenger security fees that were owed to the TSA.

Talk about kicking a guy when he’s down, Spirit is doing everything it can to stay afloat, looking for every penny it can find and the government sniffed out this scheme and put an end to it. Spirit was taking flights that customers booked, canceled for a credit, and then let the credit expire without using it and keeping the TSA fee on those bookings.

The government ruled that the airline can do one of two things with passenger security fees — pay it to the TSA or refund it to the customer. Baking the fee into a credit that doesn’t get redeemed doesn’t fall within those two options, and Spirit is being required to send $2.84 million in fees to the TSA.

Spirit would not make anyone available for comment, but an off-the-record source told us at the TSA is “gonna love being a creditor when we go under…good luck collecting.”

• Air Canada unveiled its fancy new cabins. But you won’t be flying them to New York/JFK this summer.
• American will test electronic boarding gates at DFW this summer.
• Condor is going to need some ownership help.
• Delta is suspending five routes this summer.
• Edelweiss won’t be flying to either Denver or Seattle this summer as the carrier is a known hater of Super Bowl XLVIII.
• JetBlue could be in trouble if you ask its founder and current boss at Breeze David Neeleman.
• Jet2 wants you to know that nothing beats a trip on its new all-business class B737-800.
• Korean unveiled its fancy new lounge product at Seoul/ICN.
• LEVEL will fly a lesser level of nonstops this summer from Barcelona.
• Magnicharters shut down its entire operation for at least two weeks. Because these moves usually only last a short period and everything is fine after. Don’t worry that its website now appears offline completely.
• Norse Atlantic is pulling out of Los Angeles. It says its because of high oil prices, but we suspect its because no one in Hollywood would take them up on their movie script “The Many Bjørns.”
• Oman Air will return service to Dubai tomorrow.
• Qantas is reducing its flying both to the U.S. and domestically to combat spiking oil prices.
• SAS will begin 5x weekly Mumbai service in June.
• SCAT Airlines, in addition to its unfortunate name, is now the sole shareholder of Southern Sky Airlines.
• SkyTeam named Cate Leigh as VP for Corporate Affairs. She will spin the wheel on her first day with each SkyTeam carrier and will move to whatever country’s airline it stops on.
• Spirit is looking to reject seven more airplanes.

Spent nearly an hour trying to figure out how to fasten my seatbelt.

Then it finally clicked.