The American low-cost airline Spirit Airlines, in financial difficulties for several months, announced on Monday that it was taking shelter from its creditors.
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Spirit Airlines said in a press release that it had reached an agreement with a majority of its creditors to reduce its debt, in particular through the injection of $350 million from existing creditors.
In this context, Spirit placed itself under the protection of the law via a simplified process of the American bankruptcy law (known as Chapter 11).
The company intends to continue operating throughout this process, and specifies that its customers can continue to book and fly without interruption.
Spirit also explains that it expects to be delisted “in the short term” from the New York Stock Exchange, without specifying a precise date. Its stock has fallen by almost 90% over the past year.
The Dania Beach, Florida, group, which recorded eleven consecutive quarters of losses in August, indicated a few days ago that it could not publish its results for the third quarter of 2024.
In April, the group announced that it would postpone the delivery of the Airbus 320Neo, which it was due to receive by the end of 2026, by five years, in order to improve its liquidity by around $350 million over the next two years.
In addition to the decision to postpone these deliveries, the company had taken several cost-saving measures, including freezing the hiring of pilots and flight attendants as well as resorting to technical unemployment.
Spirit had increased its capacity and market share in air transport post-Covid, but the company faced increased competition from other carriers, resulting in too much supply.
In 2022, its competitor Frontier Airlines attempted to merge with it, a $2.9 billion operation, before the JetBlue group made a higher offer.
However, in March, JetBlue announced that it was abandoning this acquisition, a few weeks after an unfavorable court decision, the US Department of Justice having obtained from a federal judge to block the operation.
The union of JetBlue and Spirit would have formed the fifth player in air transport in the United States.
