The airlines operations, shit as they are in the US, agreed aren't that "profitable" on the whole, with some exceptions like Delta and Alaska...but you're leaving out the fact that their immensely profitable "division" let's call it, where does that money go? Shareholder buybacks, stock grants--and certainly not making the flight experience suck less which might actually induce demand. Airlines are expensive and cyclical to run, but when they are profitable it's not used prudently because they know they can just get a government bailout so why not pay off their rich friends in the meantime and juice stock price?

What is their immensely profitable division?

Your line of thinking is like saying all products in a business are equally profitable. Grocery stores have higher margin products and lower but it doesn't mean they don't need them all to compete in the marketplace--they can't just have a loyalty program without the airline. If they could they would have long ago done it (and to a degree they have selling huge amounts of forward miles to banks) but at that point there would be no argument left that they are operating independently of government backing.

This comment was made in context to buying an airline. In that context, where we the people are creating an airline co-op, how do we make it profitable so that's it doesn't have to again file for bankruptcy and go out of business?

They were regulated utilities, then the champion of "free markets" Reagan, deregulated them leading to the front capitalism we have today; private gains and public-vscled bailout losses. Funny the government never gets called into the fat years to take dividend checks from airlines...

From its deregulation in 1978 to the end of 2025, the airline industry has cumulatively lost money: its net profit over those 47 years sits at negative $37 billion.

When airlines were regulated this way their routes were determined by the government and that literally meant that an airline might "own" a specific route meaning no other airline could fly that route and they didn't have to compete.

This is one of the many reasons that air travel was so expensive back then and deregulation made airline travel cheaper.

So what were talking about here is buying and running a budget airline without mileage plans or credit cards to subsidize it, and we're buying it saddled with its debt. And and we're going to run it somehow magically as a budget airline competitive in the market with other airlines without doing any of the stuff you list above, and and and we expect to pay a board to run this thing and and and and we expect it to be successful (not even profitable, just able to cover its costs as a budget airline). Not to mention we don't want shareholders to profit (and we would be the shareholders in this instance, right?)

Oh and to make it a good airline to work for as you said in your first comment the employees would have to be able to unionize which comes with its own costs. Do I have this right?

Like. I took all this into account when I made my comment and I was therefore confused by your first comment and your response makes me ask further questions.

One of which is, the main mitigating factor in why Spirit went out of business in the first place is fuel prices skyrocketing due to Traitor Trump's "not a war" with Iran. So there's that.