# Next 2 Airlines Following Spirit Path

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** 74 Gear
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0dZ_6sEExI
- **Дата:** 07.06.2026
- **Длительность:** 27:44
- **Просмотры:** 92,845

## Описание

I predicted Spirit failing when I looked at their financials a few years ago. These airlines are next.

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## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0dZ_6sEExI) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00)

Spirit is officially closed, and a lot of people are asking which airline is next. As of May 2nd, 2026, Spirit officially closed their doors, and there was a lot of headlines talking about it in the aviation news. But, of course, the obvious question is, for a lot of people, they haven't seen an airline close. They've seen, you know, COVID, where things were a little bit bad, but they haven't seen this heavy downturn where an airline officially closes. There's always threats and, oh, maybe we're going to furlough, but it's officially closed, not like a furlough you can come back to. It is over. And for a lot of people that have been in aviation for the last 10, 15 years, they haven't seen this cycle. So, they're getting nervous, wondering which airline is most likely to close next, because in 2023, I published this video where I was talking about the financials of Spirit and how if things didn't change with their business model, or if they didn't raise their airfares, the future for Spirit looked very bleak after looking through their financials. Now, that was the video that I published. Outside of that video, a friend of mine who is at JetBlue, call sign Turtle, she had texted me and asked me like, hey, is this merger with Spirit and is that going to be good for us? Cuz she's a flight attendant at JetBlue. And then, when it didn't happen, this is the text that occurred. I knew she was worried about it, and that's why I said Spirit's financials are terrible right now. I was pretty sure 2 and 1/2 years ago, before the doors officially closed, that they were done, partially because of their financials and the overall business model, the changing dynamics that were happening as far as consumer spending and the customer base that they had, and the fact of the strategies that the big three, United, Delta, and American, were employing to basically compete with them on price, and since people were fighting to get the credit cards on the other big three, they were able to get revenue from the credit cards. And the only fighting that was happening on Spirit was what was on the planes. The two most obvious airlines that right now that are at risk of closing are JetBlue and Frontier. I think it's also worth mentioning that the financials of American Airlines is also really bad and it is different because of some of the things that they have in place, mostly the credit cards that these other airlines aren't able to compete with. Now, I'm not saying that American can't turn themselves around like, you know, if they hired me as their executive vice president of marketing, I mean, if I can get a guy that the internet calls Lord Voldemort to have a successful YouTube channel while sitting alone in a hotel room talking to a camera, I surely could get things turned around and increase international air travel for an airline like that. And the reason I mentioned I'm international is because I partnered with Olafly, specifically their Olafly plans, which is a monthly eSIM subscription that makes staying connected around the world simpler and easier than ever. You install one eSIM, pay one fixed monthly price, and you're covered in over 160 destinations. They have two flexible plans, unlimited data and a light plan with 25 GB per month. And both plans include hotspots, which is huge for me because I bring my laptop everywhere because it's be impossible to research the financials of airlines or whatever I'm doing. And I've been using Olafly for a while. I wanted to make sure it was good before I told you all about it. The other thing that I really like is this feature called always on. It's basically a loyalty perk. So, even if you cancel your subscription, you still get 1 GB of data every 30 days at no extra cost with your eSIM still installed. So, if a last-minute trip comes up because crew scheduling calls you or you land somewhere unexpectedly, you're not starting from zero. You'll already have a connection as soon as you arrive. When you're planning to take your trip this summer, I put a link in the description. Use that with my code so you can get a discount on your trip with your Olafly plan. Now, Spirit didn't die because of the big front seat or because people hated their fees, although they weren't very popular. They died because they ran out of one of the most important things, cash. Now, if you see me sitting around in an airport, a lot of times I'm sitting in a corner somewhere and if I'm in my uniform, but if I'm not, I'm usually got a hat on and I'm just kind of sitting there in the corner and I usually have earphones in. And that's not because I'm listening to music, I'm usually listening to a book. And strangely enough, one of the books that I read was this one from Jim Collins. It's called How the Mighty Fall. In it, he tells about a legendary professor at Stanford Business School named Bill Lazier. Now, I'm going to paraphrase a few things, but it's very relevant to these two stories of what's going to happen with these two airlines and exactly what happened with Spirit. And keep in mind, I read, also known as listened to, so I don't know, some people say that's not reading, but I listened to this book several months ago, but when I was reading through these financials, it made me think of this story of Bill Lazier. And so, essentially, what he did is at the start of his semester with these students, these business students who were doing advanced degrees in business, he would ask them, "What is the most important thing for a business? " Now, you can imagine, all these MBA students are raising their hands and they're giving all kinds of sophisticated smart people answers like market share, customer satisfaction

### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0dZ_6sEExI&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00)

innovation, all things which I'm guessing were getting thrown around inside the Spirit boardroom and we saw how that worked out for them. And my guess is, based off of the financials of United and Delta, some of these same catchphrases are being thrown around in the American boardroom, but since I haven't been invited to be in there and participate in that and tell them about how we can turn things around, I'm I'll never really know. What this professor did is, after listening to everybody say everything, he walked over to his chalkboard. I guess this was a long time ago. And on this chalkboard, in huge letters, he wrote C A S H. Cash. That was the most important thing. And to put it simply, Spirit ran out of cash more than once, which is the exact same risk that both JetBlue and Frontier have, and you're going to see exactly why when we dig into their financials. I had some friends at Spirit. It's terrible what happened over there and I have friends currently at JetBlue and Frontier. Both of them have asked me like, "Hey, what do you think about this? is going to happen with us? " And so that made me start looking into their financials because both of them had seen my video on Spirit a couple years ago and they were like thinking, "Can you look at our stuff? " And I'll be honest, I I'm not a financial advisor or an accountant. I barely finished high school, but I'm able to dig around enough to look at everything objectively and I was able to see, "Hey, Spirit, if this merger doesn't happen, they're in big trouble unless a major change happens. " So I thought, "All right, I'll look into these two airlines because these are the two most likely to not exist very soon. " So I thought, "What do their financials look like? " So I figured I would share it with you. First up, let's look at JetBlue. I like JetBlue. I think they have a good niche and they have a real stronghold on the East Coast. When they started, they were very innovative, but remember, innovation doesn't really matter. All that really matters is cash. And they're not doing so great in the cash department. Now this is strange because you'll see articles like this about JetBlue and it's saying they're $9 billion in the hole, which obviously is not good. But not all debt is bad debt, so it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad thing. Then you start reading things from the CEO where they're putting out these press points and saying things like, "We delivered a strong first quarter with revenue performance exceeding our expectations. " And they mention all kinds of facts and figures about how revenue is up and things are great and then the president concludes saying, "We're particularly pleased with our revenue trends. " Now let me translate this from corporate talk to normal people talk and it's essentially this. If you're making $5,000 a month, let's say, and that's your normal salary, and then your boss comes to you and says, "Hey, I'm giving you a 5% bump in your revenue. " You're thinking, "5%? Great, I'll take a 5% raise. So, now you're at $5,250 a month. Great, and that feels great. But, now what you have to do is do a call with your friends and tell them about this. This is essentially what a public company has to do. They have to make these call earnings calls where they tell everybody this is what's going on in the financials. So, you call up your buddy and you go, "Hey, Frank, guess what? 5% raise. " Which is essentially what they're saying right here. We've had a 5% increase. But, then you also have to be honest with your friends because that's the type of person that you are. So, you have to tell them about some other things like the expenses, and that is not so pretty. You got to tell them things like your electric bill jumped up 15%, which is exactly what happened here with JetBlue's fuel costs. And it's not just JetBlue, all airlines are struggling with this situation with the fuel because it jumped very quickly. And of course, you want to be tactically honest with your friends, so you probably should mention the credit card that is maxed out that is squeezing the life out of your bank account. And that's what we see right here because borrowing money at this moment isn't very cheap. On page 52 of JetBlue's annual financials, you can see that their loss from interest is up almost 60% from 2024. Now, that's just not the interest rate went up, they also borrowed more things. So, as you borrow more things, the interest payment goes up. That's how that works. But, when you hear people talking about how the interest rates impact the financial economy of the United States and every business, this is where it impacts because borrowing money right now is very expensive. So, when you have a lot of debt and then the interest rates start to go up and you have to refinance that debt every so often because the banks don't want to get pinned into something like when you buy a house, you get an interest rate and it's for 30 years and it's fixed, that's not how it works in business. Sometimes it might be 1 year or 5 years. It depends on the risk level of the lenders, how comfortable they feel with you, how much you have in assets, debt, what your cash flow and all your financials look like. They look at all that, they make an analysis, and they might say, "Okay, we'll give you this rate for 3 years, or rate, but it's floating. Every single day the rate can change. " It can vary in a bunch of different ways that you can structure that debt. No matter what, if you have a lot of debt, and right now borrowing money is high and expensive, that interest rate is going to eat your lunch, which is partly what's happening

### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0dZ_6sEExI&t=600s) Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00)

with JetBlue. They've had an increase in their liabilities in almost every category. Their total liabilities are 87% of their total assets, which explains why their stock over the past 5 years looks like this. There are some things in here that it's really not as bad as just being there at zero. It's not as bad as like it kind of seems because you can see some leasing liabilities, meaning it's just money that they are going to owe on leased planes or leased equipment. And other section here, like air traffic control liabilities, essentially people bought a ticket, but they haven't flown yet, so it's technically a liability on their books. And I show that because just because a business has a 5% increase, which is great, if they have also a much higher debt load to carry, which a much higher interest rate that's over weighing that 5% increase, then it doesn't really matter because the only thing that matters is cash, which takes us to this. On page 64 of the financials, it shows that JetBlue last year lost $600 million, which I guess is better than the previous year, where they lost $795 million. But both are a lot worse than the year before that, where they also lost $310 million. So I hear some of my friends at JetBlue, shout out to Turtle, saying things like, "Oh, it's because of the fuel. The fuel has really messed us up. " Well, no. I mean, it hasn't been a helpful thing, right? The fuel cost, that is not great. And what I see sometimes is CEOs or people of all businesses where they want to blame this bad situation that they're in on something that's happening right now. And that was basically designed so that way the investors or the people that are in the company are going, "Okay, this is just a temporary problem. This isn't a long-term problem. " But when you look at the long-term financials of what's going on, they've been losing a lot of money, not a little bit of money, but a lot of money for 3 years. And a big part of that is from this, their debt. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Dave Ramsey all debt is bad debt. You can't run, I don't think realistically, an airline on zero debt just based off of the cost of the airframes and everything like that. It just isn't very realistic. So, not all debt is bad debt, but it has to be in hands of the right people. Like, if you were doing financial planning at your house, you wouldn't go to your toddler and say, "Hey, like, here's how much money we have. What should we allocate to snacks? " Because if they're anything like me, they'd say like, "Let's allocate 30% of our total budget into snacks. " And then you're going to run out of money, right? So, who is managing the money and what they're allocating it to, shout-out to the US government, will basically translate into what does the future look like as far as the long-term stability of that airline or, in my case, my country. Now, at the end of the day, this loss here is going to be a problem because it means that they're eventually going to run out of cash, which is why their ex-founder came out saying this. He thinks they're eventually going to have to file for bankruptcy. And what that does is it wipes out some of the debt off of their books, and I think that is kind of what is planned right now. But before we say JetBlue is completely closed of having any chance of surviving, there's some really important things that are going on. One is that with Spirit closing, Spirit and JetBlue have a large overlap. One key place that they have a lot of overlap is Fort Lauderdale being at one of their main hubs for JetBlue and also for Spirit. JetBlue is in a position to pick up all that air travel that people were doing that were doing it on Spirit. Well, the most obvious choice now is to go on JetBlue. It's going to be a little bit more expensive, but different experience. Like no in-flight fighting, hopefully. But even with that big bump, I'm seeing articles saying that on flights that JetBlue is doing that Spirit was doing, there's bumps of over 20%. I still don't think in a few years JetBlue is going to exist, but I don't think that they're going to close like Spirit. I'll show you why in a second, but first I need to show you exactly what Frontier is doing that's different, and then I'll explain the two paths I see them both going down. So, on Frontier, they're in a very strange position. On one hand, their biggest competitors have just vanished, which is great. However, they don't have the same system overlap, meaning they're not covering the exact same flights that the Spirit people were flying. There is some overlap. I've read 18%. Some people say 30%. I don't really get down and break down what exactly all the overlap is, but they're not getting undercut anymore, which is great. If you need to ride that route and they're doing that flight, and you're trying to get there as cheaply as possible, and Frontier's kind of your only option to do it, well, then you're going to ride Frontier, which means that they can charge more, which these airlines obviously need to charge more. You can't continuously be losing $600 million every year and then stay in business. It's just never going to work, no matter what. Now, the rumor that I'm hearing from my friends at Frontier is they think that they're only 6 months behind where Spirit's at, but I don't

### [15:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0dZ_6sEExI&t=900s) Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00)

think so. Remember when I showed you JetBlue that they had the $16 billion assets? When you look at it side by side with Frontier, when we scroll down to page 88 of the financials from Frontier, you see here they only have 958 million in assets. Honestly, when I read that, I was confused. I kept reading it going like, I must not be seeing this right, cuz I think Frontier has something like 150, 160 planes, which is a lot. There's no way that you can have 150 or 160 Airbuses and not have at least a couple billion dollars worth of assets. Well, they do. It's just right here. It's listed as operating lease right of use assets. This line right here shows 4. 8 billion. But here's the thing. These are the planes they get to use. They don't own those planes. That means it's kind of like a lease on a car. You keep making payments at a certain point you give the car back. You give the plane back. Same exact concept. Or you're paying more, but you're buying that aircraft. Over time you will eventually own it or pay the debt down to where you can refinance it and borrow against it. So, there's two different strategies. Some people think leasing a car is better and every so often you're just going to give it back and get another one. Obviously, you're not building any equity in it. And the other side is you're building equity. You're putting a portion of it is going to the interest of the bank and the other portion is going into buying that aircraft. So, there's two different theories on how you want to run your airline, but Frontier have it where they take this model. All this right here, all these assets, it's a lease payment. That money is going to a leasing company or a bank and it is gone. Now, Frontier only has 958 million though. 671 million of that is cash. Now, that is down from last year where they had $740 million and that's a 10% loss. Now, you'll notice they made up some things in some other categories here, which I think honestly is a little bit vague. Things like supplies and other, which to me is a bit odd. Like, oh, you know, just have some $25 million in supplies and other things over here. So, I don't know how all that gets determined or who audits these things, but it seems a little bit strange to me, but all right, let's go with it. But the position here that Frontier is in is strong in one aspect. They have a lot of cash. Let's say you cash and you have that in a savings account or a checking account and you're running a business and every year you're going, "Man, we're making less and losing money. " At a certain point, you're going to go, "I'm just as like taking my cash here, just throwing it into this fire or just keep this fire going, but there's no end in sight of the horizon where things are going to really turn around. " Their business is getting squashed from every side. Their demographic of the people that they are have been flying on their airline is shrinking because the inflation has gone up so much. So, that's partly happening. The competition on pricing, they're not able to compete because the majors are using the revenue that's being generated from their credit cards to run the prices against these low-cost carriers. Uh JetBlue kind of fits in that category, but mostly Frontier and Spirit. They're able to run these business models where they're able to undercut them on price and have a better product. So, that makes it so people can't do that anymore. Now, one page later, you're going to see on the financials here, just like JetBlue, Frontier lost $137 million last year. You'll also notice, unlike JetBlue, they made money in 2024 and only lost 11 million in 2023. You're talking about a very massive swing in a very fast time. To go from losing 11 million or making money in 11 million in the grand scheme of the airlines, it's a revenue is very small. Everybody can have a bad year, but then you're making money and then you took this massive loss. And Frontier is starting to pivot in how they're doing things and that would have me concerned if I was at working there. Right now, the AI models are saying that they think Frontier is likely to get absorbed by Allegiant, who just recently purchased Sun Country. And I think that's possible. The problem is that Frontier doesn't have really anything to buy. I don't know what their lease terms are. It's possible their lease terms are just like so fantastic that because they did a pretty unique thing the way they structured their leases and when they bought them and how they sold them to a bank and then had the bank find They did it was It's pretty clever the way they did that. So, great for the people at the top um to get that structured and also because these planes are very in demand, especially the engines, they have themselves set up in kind of a unique position which is great for them, but would concern me if I was a crew member at their airline and what makes me suspicious of the possibility of a buyout from them. In 2026, they worked out a deal to give back 24 planes. They get a wipe $400 million of debt off their books, which saves them $90 million a year in leases. Now, that's a

### [20:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0dZ_6sEExI&t=1200s) Segment 5 (20:00 - 25:00)

classic move from the airlines that are asset rich, which they are because they control these planes, but their overall revenue is cash poor. These engines right now on these Airbuses are very much in demand. There's been all kinds of problems. Boeing's had their problems, Airbus has had problems, mostly kind of center around the engines from several different manufacturers. It's been a bit of a mess. That's part of what collapsed Spirit because they had a large part of their fleet that was set aside because they were having all kinds of issues, so they couldn't fly those planes and so they couldn't generate those revenues, but they still have to make those payments to the bank. Frontier, what they're doing is they have these planes where these engines they have a lot of value. And because the leasing company is coming to them or Frontier is going to them, I don't really know who's kind of making that first move, but these planes, which have a lot of value, they're able to give them back to the leasing company. I'm guessing it's some type of a profit because the leasing company is able to make a bunch of money on those planes because the demand for those planes, specifically the engines, is very high. So, they can give them back. They get a bunch of debt off their books and pass it down the road to the future, which they've committed to, which happens or doesn't happen, I don't know, we'll see. But, they now remove that debt load that they have, probably makes them money on it, but it also means that's 24 more planes that they don't have generating revenue. That's a problem because airlines make money with airplanes. Without airplanes, you can't generate revenue, kind of a problem. Now, JetBlue on the other hand, they have a lot of assets. They own their planes. They own their gates. They have a very dominant route structure along the East Coast. And with the increased deployment of their Mint service, which is like their first-class business class, they've proven that they have a clientele that will pay the higher price tickets. So, you have Frontier on one hand where they don't own anything, gates, planes, anything, and you have a clientele that I think maybe they have like a big seat program, but that's not anything like what you have uh if you're flying on Delta or American, United, or JetBlue with their Mint service. That is a different overall experience, a clientele that's going to pay for a Frontier big seat versus a Mint business class lie-flat seat. Totally different. So, JetBlue's proven they have the clientele, they own have assets, they have gates, route structures, and they have a stronghold on the East Coast. So, when you're looking at JetBlue and Spirit, if you're or JetBlue and Frontier, if you're looking at them as an airline, you're thinking, "Well, who if we want to expand and we want to grow, who of these two is better? " Well, you could buy Frontier and merge with them, and you're getting a good lease deal on on a bunch of planes and then cash. Well, "Oh, here's 600 million. Now, you give me 600 million. " Great, like it just doesn't really make sense. However, with JetBlue, it's a little bit different because of the way they set themselves up. So, here's what I think the future looks like for JetBlue. Just like their ex-CEO said, this bankruptcy thing that he's talking about, I think that probably will happen. And I think that will happen on purpose. When you file for bankruptcy, you're able to clear out a lot of debt. And by clearing debt, you look financially a lot better. And by getting rid of that debt, you now have a better book, your finances look better, which means another company could look at you and go, "Okay, now you've offloaded a couple billion dollars in debt. Now we want to acquire you. " And would JetBlue has a strong route structure. They're heavy on East Coast, but weak on the West Coast. Guess who's heavy on the West Coast, is doing international travel, which requires you have first-class, business-class people, and has a very similar concept, similar clientele to JetBlue, and has this route structure. You notice how these two route structures would be very complimentary if they got pushed together and became one? Well, that's Alaskan, Hawaiian, Alaska Hawaiian, or whatever new name they're going to go with. And if you want my honest guess what I think will happen, I think that they're going to end up absorbing JetBlue and having that whole network, East Coast, West Coast, and international. And they will rebrand themselves into something else, where they'll become a fourth major. And, you know, people are saying, "Oh, well, no, that won't happen. The DOJ will block that like they blocked the Spirit JetBlue merger. " However, here is the current Secretary of Transportation, Sean Duffy. And if you listen to what he says here, it's a little bit political, but he's blaming the previous administration for why Spirit ends up closing. — Uh there was a proposed merger between JetBlue and Spirit. And Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, judge, along with the Biden DOJ, uh decided that they did not want that merger to take place. — Essentially, what he's saying is Spirit didn't have the merger, and so they closed. We wouldn't want to see that. Basically saying, "We would never let that happen. " Which means that if JetBlue were to file bankruptcy, everyone starts to panic like, "Oh, no, we're going to have another one. " But then they go back to this guy say, "Hey, Sean, unless you want to have another one of these airlines close under your watch, where you get blamed, you need to let JetBlue merge with somebody. And it's even better for the general public

### [25:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0dZ_6sEExI&t=1500s) Segment 6 (25:00 - 27:00)

which is always what the Department of Justice says. They don't want to do that because it's not good for the general public, but in this case, they'd be able to make their case and say, "Hey, we have this really strong route structure on the East and they West. Putting them together creates more competition against the majors, American, Delta, United, Southwest, if you want to count them. I don't know if they quite size-wise really count in that's kind of network, but you know, you're able to create more competition against the what they call the big three. And so, I think with what people saw with Spirit, the 17,000 jobs that got lost there, people not wanting to be responsible for that, and the government not bailing them out, which while I'm very sad for the Spirit people, I'm very glad that they didn't do that because they weren't going to make it. There were you could keep pouring money in there, but that thing that pony wasn't going to run. Frontier, what I see for their future, it's possible because of the leases that Allegiant does merge them together, but they don't really bring a lot to the table other than cash and probably some good lease deals. So, my concern for Frontier and for the crews that are over there is that they have these airplanes, which are worth a lot of money. They could just turn around and start lopping those off in 20-40 plane increments and wiping off a bunch of debt, consolidating, which, you know, that's great, and maybe get on the most profitable routes, but when you're competing against these airlines where able to make billions of dollars alone on credit cards and their Frontier people aren't able to do that. And they have cash, but they don't have any assets. Like the options, the wiggle room of where they can go is not great. JetBlue has assets, so they can borrow against those assets. It's hard to borrow against a lease. Like, "Hey, I got this plane which you don't own that I own payments on. Like, do you want to give me a loan? " Like, it's a little bit of a trickier loan deal to do. If what I think happens and we now have American, United, Delta, and the Alaskan conglomerate of Virgin, Alaskan, Hawaiian, and what will be JetBlue all merge together in one major. I think that's probably the most likely path based off of the financials and everything that's going on right now, and that's probably what will happen. But, I don't think one of those four majors is going to make it. Statistically, when you look at a competitive market, usually it's two, sometimes three. It's rarely four. It's rarely four that are going to It's usually two. But, you know, you're going to have Coke and Pepsi or Duracell and Energizer. You typically have two or sometimes three that are going, but rarely four. Now, I have my theory of which of those four that I just mentioned isn't going to make it, but this video is already getting long enough, and um breakfast is open, and I got to get down there to go eat. I look forward to hearing from you. Until then, keep the blue side up.

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*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/52704*