Spirit Airlines debuts new Spirit Central headquarters in Dania Beach
MIAMI - As Spirit Airlines is facing financial headwinds, it's celebrating a milestone.
Spirit debuted its new Dania Beach headquarters this morning called Spirit Central.
Spirit Central is the airline's new 4-building, 11-acre headquarters in Dania Beach. It includes office space for up to 1000 employees, a training hub for pilots and flight attendants and a corporate housing building for employees who are training.
"The road to success is not always smooth. We've undoubtedly experienced some challenges over the last few years. You guys kind know what I'm talking about," Ted Christie, Spirit's President and CEO, while speaking to employees.
Spirit's been having a tough time since Covid. The federal government blocked a merger with JetBlue. It recently announced it's furloughing 260 pilots saying a manufacturer's engine problem is grounding some planes.
Today, we actually have 20 planes that are on the ground that don't have engines on them, we expect that number to grow to about 40 by the end of the year. So we have an overstaffing problem that is because of that," he said.
Christie told us they're taking this time to re-group and gain momentum.
"Eventually once we find our legs, we're going to be adding jobs here, bringing in new flights into FLL, we're already the biggest operator here, we expect to grow that," he promised.
Passengers are hoping for more too.
"The only hope I have is to be able to build points and get a lounge because we travel a lot with spirit," said passenger Brenda McBryde.
David Slotnick is a senior airline business reporter for The Points Guy. "They're very quickly having to pivot their plans and try and figure out a different way to make money or at least stop losing money in the meantime," Slotnick said.
He says while it's a challenging time for Spirit, the airline is making changes.
"They're looking to tweak their network. They're looking to adjust the way that they fly. They're not hiring as much as they were planning to, or at all," he said.
Christie is optimistic about the plan going forward.
"We're conquering those challenges head-on right now. Spirit isn't going anywhere," he said.
