Sun Country Airlines (SY, Minneapolis St. Paul International) aims to file for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in April 2020, Jude Bricker, the LCC's chief executive, a former COO of Allegiant Air (G4, Las Vegas Harry Reid), has told the travel industry news site Skift.
The Minnesota-based carrier was acquired by private-equity firm Apollo Global Management in December 2017, and the new owner cut costs, dropped first class, and added fees, recasting it in line with the discount carrier business model.
Sun Country would be the first US airline to go public since Virgin America in late 2014, Skift points out, while Spirit Airlines was the last ULCC to do so, in 2011. However, despite ULCC Frontier Airlines signalling it planned a public offering in 2017 it later changed course.
Nevertheless, Sun Country senses a “window of opportunity”, Bricker said in the interview. “We just want to be ready for it, if it is open for us,” he said. “If it’s not, we will wait.”
Since Bricker's arrival, Sun Country Airlines has started to replace less efficient B737-700s with larger B737-800s. It still has four B737-700s in its fleet with an average age of 18 years, according to ch-aviation fleets, but the carrier has said these will slowly be phased out. It also has twenty-six B737-800s, which have an average age of 14.2 years. Some of the proceeds from the IPO will go towards adding newer aircraft, Bricker said.
The carrier's network has also broadened, moving beyond its Minnesota base to launch routes from cities such as Portland International (to Las Vegas Harry Reid, Nashville International, San Francisco, and St. Louis Lambert International as well as Minneapolis St. Paul International) and Los Angeles International (to Las Vegas, Nashville, and Honolulu), according to ch-aviation capacities. In total, it currently operates 53 routes within the United States and to Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, many of them served seasonally as demand rises and falls through the year.
