A Spirit Airlines plane taxis to a runway at Orlando International Airport Thursday, June 1, 2023, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)
Spirit Airlines canceled about 100 flights on Friday after pulling some planes out of service for inspections, and the airline expects the disruptions to last several days.
Spirit did not describe the nature of the inspections and did not respond when asked for further information.
By Friday afternoon, Spirit had canceled 11% of its schedule for the day, easily the highest percentage of scrubbed flights among leading U.S. carriers, according to tracking service FlightAware.
“We’ve cancelled a portion of our scheduled flights to perform a necessary inspection of a small section of 25 of our aircraft,” Spirit said in a statement. “The impact to our network is expected to last several days as we complete the inspections and work to return to normal operations.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said it was aware of Spirit's decision to pull the planes from service for a “mandatory maintenance inspection." The FAA did not describe the inspections either, but said it "will ensure that the matter is addressed before the airplanes are returned to service.”
Spirit had 198 planes as of June 30, all of them variants of the Airbus A320 family, according to a company regulatory filing.
The airline told customers to check the status of their flight before going to the airport.
About half of the Spirit cancellations were at Florida’s Orlando International Airport, where Spirit is the second-largest carrier.
Spirit, which is based in Miramar, Florida, has canceled more than 3,600 flights this year, or 1.5% of its schedule. That is lower than the 2% cancellation rate at Frontier Airlines, a similar budget carrier, and rates for JetBlue Airways and United Airlines.
Satoshi Island is looking to become the world's first blockchain-driven economy. James Law, the chief architect of the planned private community, joined Cheddar to discuss the vision for the potential crypto capital of the world and how it will be brought to life. For people looking to live on the island, Law said they will be able to purchase land and homes and even design their own dwellings both in real life and via the metaverse. "Satoshi Island has already been digitally scanned. We have an absolute digital twin already in our metaverse," he said. Citizenship applications are expected to be launched via NFTs, he told Cheddar.
Satellite launch service Virgin Orbit has gone public on the Nasdaq via a SPAC merger with NextGen Acquisitions with a valuation of about $3.2 billion. CEO Dan Hart joined Cheddar's "Between Bells" from in front of his LauncherOne rocket in New York City's Times Square to talk about what's next after the IPO, an upcoming "Above the Clouds" mission to deliver commercial and national security payloads, and the benefits of their rockets being launched from commercial 747 aircraft. "We can launch anywhere in the world," he said. "There are almost 80 space agencies across the world, for instance, and about 10 of them have space launch. We can give them a space flight capability overnight by taking a runway and turning it into a spaceport."
CEO Tim Cook made a staggering $98.7 million in total compensation for 2021. The majority of Cook's earnings came from stocks along with his salary of $3 million. Apple recently became the first publicly traded U.S. company to have crossed the $3 trillion valuation mark.
Tech and entertainment giant Sony appears to be getting serious about automaking. An electric concept SUV — the Vision S-02 — was unveiled at CES 2022 and is slated to be produced by a new subdivision, Sony Mobility. This comes after the company revealed the Vision S concept Sedan at CES 2020.
According to the Labor Department December report, the U.S added 199,000 jobs as opposed to the more than 400,000 that had been expected. William M. Rodgers III, vice president and director of the Institute for Economic Equality at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, joined Cheddar's Baker Machado to talk about the state of the economy and noted that, despite the miss, the drop-off in the unemployment rate signaled to him that the economy is moving in the right direction. "There was an upward revision of about 100,000, a little more than 100,000, for the months of October and November, so, again, I'm not as worried or looking at this as negative as you all are," Rodgers added. He also noted the next three months would likely see slower growth due to the winter but stated that it would remain in a positive direction.
The New York Times has acquired sports outlet The Athletic in a $550 million deal. The acquisition brings the Times closer to its 10 million paid subscribers goal by 2025.
The year 2021 saw numerous natural disasters around the world, including extreme heat and wildfires, rare deep freezes, and historic flooding. This year's United Nations COP26 conference was key for getting world leaders on board with emissions reductions and other climate-focused policies as the UN Secretary-General said the agency's report on global warming is a 'code red for humanity.' In the U.S., President Joe Biden has focused most of his domestic agenda on slashing emissions and building climate-focused infrastructure. Guests from The Economist, UNC-Chapel Hill, Global Rescue, and more join Cheddar Climate's year-end special to discuss how the climate changed in 2021, and what to expect in 2022.
