Spirit Airlines shut down at 3 a.m. on May 2. Most of the country saw the headlines.
A small group of pilots saw a job to do. The yellow Airbus jets that had been flying customers hours before needed to disappear. Fast.
In just over a week, 23 of them were sitting in the Arizona desert.
The Repo Pilots
Nomadic Aviation Group ran the operation. The Delaware-based firm specializes in moving planes from one place to another.
Managing partner Steve Giordano got the call to start moving crews around 6 p.m. on May 1. That was just nine hours before Spirit went dark.
Nomadic usually delivers planes to new buyers around the world. Repo work like this is rare for the firm.
Major U.S. airlines barely ever shut down, and Spirit's collapse was the biggest one in decades.
The jets flew empty to special storage airports near Phoenix and Tucson. Dry desert air slows down corrosion on aircraft, which is why airlines parked thousands of jets in those same spots during Covid.
One Spirit jet flew from Philadelphia to Pinal County Airport in Marana, Arizona. The flight was the last Spirit plane to ever leave Philly.
Giordano told CNBC the easy part of any mission like this is the flying. Lining up fuel, crews, and inspections is the harder part.
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Why The Engines Are Worth More Than The Planes
Spirit had 114 Airbus A320 jets. Sixty-six were leased, so those go back to the leasing firms that own them.
The rest can get picked apart for parts.
The most valuable piece is the engine.
A used Pratt & Whitney PW1127G - the engine that powers Spirit's jets - was going for about $14.5 million in January. Three years earlier, the same engine cost $11.3 million.
That is a 28% jump in the resale price.
Supply chain snags since Covid have pushed up the cost of used aircraft parts. Engines lead the pack.
Repair shop wait times are still close to double what they should be, per aviation firm IBA Group.
The catch: some of Spirit's engines were grounded by a Pratt & Whitney recall years back. That recall helped push Spirit toward bankruptcy in the first place.
Those grounded engines are worth less. The ones that escaped the recall are what buyers want.
What To Watch
Spirit started the long process of dismantling itself in bankruptcy court earlier this month. More planes will get torn apart, and more parts will hit the market.
The leasing firms that own most of Spirit's fleet want their jets back fast.
Used engine values have only gone up since 2023. Spirit's wind-down is the first real test of whether they keep climbing.
Buyers have plenty of demand. The question is how many of Spirit's engines were actually flying when the airline went under.
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