Christie, whose company announced last month that it plans to cut an unspecified number of jobs and to sell off some jets worth millions, gets to keep the bonus if he stays with the firm for another year, — just a 30-minute drive from company headquarters in Miramar,Spirit Airlines CEO Ted Christie was paid a $3.8 million retention bonus just a week before his company filed for bankruptcy.Christie and his wife, Theresa, paid $1.2 million for the three-bedroom, three-bathroom home in 2012.
The airline’s business model of an integrated fleet, keeping planes flying more hours in the day and putting more seats on every aircraft, helped optimize its resources and kept costs down.Its high fleet utilization produced double-digit operating margins for nine straight years until 2020. Spirit’s average daily aircraft utilization is down 16% this year versus 2019, fueling cost pressures.
Spirit, like many other airlines, chased growth, but did so by adding more than $2 billion in debt between 2020 and 2023.