Spirit Airlines (NK, Fort Lauderdale International) President and Chief Executive Officer Robert Fornaro says the Florida-based ultra low-cost carrier is considering both the CSeries and E-Jet E2s as part of its longterm refleeting options.
Spirit is currently an all-Airbus operator employing thirty-one A319-100s, fifty-two A320-200s, five A320neo, and twenty-nine A321-200s on flights to 65 destinations across 18 countries in the Americas and the Caribbean.
Speaking to The Points Guy blog, the executive confirmed that as part of the review process, Spirit would look at all the available options.
"We want choice and we want competition on the manufacturer side. We’re an all-Airbus customer but we think you have to look at everything," he said adding that his own experience at AirTran Airways (Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson) had taught him that operating two separate fleet types could work.
"At AirTran, we had the lowest cost [in the] United States with two fleet types (the Boeing 737 and 717). So you can do it, you just need to manage the process. At Spirit, we also need to have enough scale in the airplane to make it worth our while."
JetBlue Airways (B6, New York JFK), itself a predominantly A320 Family operator albeit with a sizeable fleet of E190s, has already considered pitches from both Bombardier Aerospace (BBA, Montréal Trudeau) and Embraer (EMB, São José dos Campos Professor Urbano Ernesto Stumpf) over potential replacements for its sixty EMB-190s. In January, the carrier told Reuters in a statement it was “exploring a full range of options from maintaining the current fleet to a full replacement with an alternative aircraft type.”
