Ben Baldanza, who helped pioneer discount air travel as head of Spirit Airlines Inc. and became a target of passenger irritation over no-frills flights, has died. He was 62.
Airlines Confidential, the podcast Baldanza co-hosted until stepping down in August, announced his death at the start of Wednesday’s episode. JetBlue Airways Corp., where Baldanza was a board member, referred a reporter to a post on LinkedIn that says he died on Tuesday. He had been diagnosed in 2022 with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease.
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Baldanza was known in the industry as an innovator who helped William Franke — Spirit’s chairman, who went on to hold the same title at the parent company of Frontier Airlines — usher in the concept of “ultra low-cost carriers” before that term was derided by flyers and the subject of jokes from late-night talk show hosts.
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Spirit became known for rock-bottom fares as well as the ancillary fees it charged for coffee and water, printed boarding passes and other extras.
Baldanza “was a fierce competitor” who believed “that efficiency and cost management were essential to the success of an airline, particularly when competing against much larger, established airlines intent on putting Spirit out of business,” Franke said in an interview in August.
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Competitive Space
The low-cost model was copied not just by upstart competitors but also by traditional carriers, which introduced bare-bones “basic economy” options alongside standard fares. Spirit remained the poster child for the market, however, and a combination of service issues and poor on-time performance in the years after the switch earned the company the title of America’s most-hated airline.
“Ben took pride in the airline, and negative comments directed at Spirit — and him — were difficult for him,” Franke said.
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After about a decade as chief executive officer, Baldanza stepped down in 2016 and began teaching an airline economics class at George Mason University. He also joined the boards of JetBlue and Arlington-based Six Flags Entertainment Corp.
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He was a licensed pilot, a trombone player and, according to an Associated Press story, a devoted board game enthusiast.
Podcast Host
He maintained a public profile through Airlines Confidential, the aviation industry podcast he co-founded in 2019. He continued to host following his ALS diagnosis in 2022, even as the disease began to compromise his ability to speak. For much of 2024, Baldanza used an artificial intelligence device that converted words he typed on a keypad into audible speech, using examples of his pre-disease voice to sound like him.
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He stepped down from the podcast Aug. 11.
“I am saddened to say that this will be my last appearance on the show,” he said to open its 250th episode. “The ALS in my body has advanced to the point where I have very little energy. The energy I do have needs to be spent with my family and on my health.”
Basil Ben Baldanza was born in Rome, New York, on Dec. 3, 1961.
He received a bachelor’s degree in policy study and economics from Syracuse University and a master’s degree in public administration from Princeton University.
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Other Airlines
He held a number of finance, operations and marketing roles early in his career at US Airways Group Inc., Continental Airlines Inc., Northwest Airlines Inc., American Airlines and El Salvador’s Grupo Taca Holdings Ltd.
At American, he worked under CEO Robert Crandall and alongside Doug Parker, Tom Horton and David Cush, each of whom would become airline CEOs.
He was named president and chief operating officer at Spirit in 2005 and promoted to chief executive about 14 months later.
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In a 2023 podcast interview with Aviation Week Network, Baldanza recalled joining Spirit soon after a 12-month period in which it had lost $70 million on revenue of about $450 million. “We realized we would have to do something different,” he said.
His team’s analysis, he said, showed that the carriers that were consistently profitable were “super premium, like a Singapore maybe, or those who were super-low-cost, like Southwest was in the ‘80s or Ryanair or an airline like that. And we said, well, if we want to be profitable, we have to be at one of those extremes, and there’s no way we’re going to become Singapore or Emirates, right? So we said we’ll look to Ryanair and make that our model.”
Baldanza was ousted early in 2016, following a year in which Spirit’s expansion into larger rivals’ turf led to a 47% collapse in its shares. But the carrier’s profitability remained near the top of the industry.
Baldanza was an adjunct professor of economics at George Mason University, teaching a self-designed course called Airline Economics. With his wife, Marcia, a school-turnaround expert, he had a son, Enzo.
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– Mary Schlangenstein for Bloomberg
Spirit Airlines pioneer Ben Baldanza dies at 62
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