Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza has ceased to be the Chief Executive Officer, effective Wednesday. He is being replaced by Robert Fornaro, with the decision coming as a surprise to many analysts. Baldanza became CEO of Spirit Airlines in 2006. When he came in, the airline was seeing very heavy losses and was in a very fragile state, but Baldanza transformed Spirit Airlines during his tenure as CEO, according to The Consumerist.
Baldanza's vision was to make Spirit Airlines into an ultra-low cost carrier. He was primarily responsible for executing this vision during his time with Spirit, the transformation meaning that the base fare a passenger paid would cover very little. A passenger had to pay an additional fee for everything - from using the overhead bin to obtaining boarding passes.
One particular noteworthy change was that he did away with was the ability of airline seats to recline. Spirit planes were packed with seats that did not have the ability, allowing a larger number of seats to be packed into the aircraft, according to Associated Press.
Baldanza's sacking may come as a surprise to many watchers. This is because, purely in terms of profitability, he was able to deliver good profits and results for the airline. Even in the last year, the airline managed to make good profits on the back of low fuel prices. However despite the profits being shown, the stock took a pummeling by investors and declined by nearly 48 percent in 2015.
The main concern with the way Baldanza managed Spirit was that he was too focused on expanding capacity by adding aircraft and destinations, without a corresponding increase in the revenue generated from passengers.
Baldanza's successor as CEO, Robert Fornaro, has a lot of experience in the airline industry. He was the CEO of AirTran before it was bought by Southwest Airlines, according to Airways News.
