By Chris Kornelis

Ben Baldanza didn't want anything on his cheeseburger -- just meat and cheese held together with a bun.

"And he didn't want to pay for pickles," his wife, Marcia Baldanza, said in a recent interview. "He didn't want to have to pay for the stuff that he didn't want."

As chief executive, he turned Spirit Airlines into a carrier that sold airline tickets the way he wanted to be sold his burgers: plain and cheap, with extras sold separately. Your "bare fare" got you a seat on the plane, but if you wanted to check a suitcase, carry on a bag, or sip ginger ale, you had to open your wallet.

Critics howled. Complaints rolled in. Baldanza grinned.

You couldn't disparage his airline by calling it a bus with wings or a dollar store in the sky because he would make that point himself. His airline was different, cheaper than the others, and he was proud of it.

"If you've eaten at Ruth's Chris [Steak House] your whole life and you say, 'Well, there's this new restaurant. Let's try it,' and it's McDonald's, you're going to be really disappointed," he told The Wall Street Journal in 2012. "People who bash us have a different expectation of what they want out of their airline experience."

There were plenty of customers willing to endure the Spirit experience.

The most profitable airline

When Baldanza joined Spirit in 2005, it was a regional airline on the brink of bankruptcy. By 2012, it had popularized the ultralow-carrier model in the U.S. and the Journal reported that it was "pound for pound, the most profitable airline in the U.S." Spirit's methods were often considered outrageous, but they were also contagious: a no-frills "basic economy" fare that often includes neither checked luggage or carry-on bags has now become industry standard. (The airline has struggled with rising costs and increased competition in recent years. This week, the Journal reported that it was preparing to file for bankruptcy.)

Baldanza, who died Nov. 5 at the age of 62 after living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease), remained Spirit's CEO until 2016.

"For 20 years of my life, I thought about how could I charge people more for their ticket," he told the Journal in 2012. "Now I get to think about how I can charge less."

Born in Rome, N.Y., on Dec. 3, 1961, he grew up building rockets with his brother, and became fascinated by space and air travel. After stints at a number of airlines -- including Continental, Northwest and American -- he became chief operating officer at Spirit in 2005. By 2006, he was its chief executive.

People not like us

Baldanza was brought to Spirit by Bill Franke and his colleagues at Indigo Partners after the private-equity firm took control of the struggling airline and wanted to remake it. They found inspiration in Ireland's Ryanair, which was offering cheap flights and no-frills service in Europe. They weren't targeting people like themselves. There were plenty of airlines that catered to affluent business travelers with expense accounts. They were going after customers who would otherwise be taking the bus, the train or not going at all.

They had a single goal: low fares for safe flights. They put more seats on their planes than their competitors, flew the planes for more hours, and flew them at hours that were less convenient to fliers, but more cost-effective for the airline.

Their advertising was cheap and sometimes considered distasteful. During the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal, Spirit advertised a "BIG Weiner Sale" with "fares just too hard to resist."

Customer-service scores were low. But that was acceptable. They weren't trying to offer the best service. They were going for the lowest fares.

Baldanza apologized for none of it and was an enthusiastic spokesperson for all of it. In one video, he climbed into an overhead bin to announce the company would be charging for carry-ons. In a question-and-answer session on Reddit, a user asked: "Will there be a fee for me asking this question?"

"This answer," Baldanza told him, "is on me :)"

Write to Chris Kornelis at chris.kornelis@wsj.com.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 12, 2024 18:15 ET (23:15 GMT)

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