Spirit Airlines (NK) is an ultra-low-cost carrier headquartered in Dania Beach, Florida, United States of America. Founded over 40 years ago, it is most popular for providing travelers with the cheapest flight tickets and no frills service between destinations, thus making it a cost-effective option among fliers on a tight budget and those not fussed by additional services.
The airline flies out of nine bases in the United States to over 90 destinations within the country as well as to overseas ports in the Caribbean and Latin America with a fleet of close to 200 aircraft. In terms of passengers carried, Spirit ranked as the seventh largest carrier in North America in 2024, beating the likes of JetBlue Airways and Frontier Airlines in the process.
Most recently, Spirit made headlines due to filing for bankruptcy at the backend of last year before resuming operations this year in March after undergoing a financial restructuring. In the last month or so, their former president and CEO, Ted Christie, also stepped down after a six-year tenure in the role and was replaced by Dave Davis in April 2025.
Here is a look at who Davis is, what his background tells us, and how much Spirit will be paying him.
Who is the New Spirit CEO?
Dave Davis is an American business executive who graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1988 with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering. Thereafter, he obtained an MBA specializing in finance from the Carlson School of Management.
He started his career as a flight planning engineer with Rockwell Collins in Houston in the late 80s before joining Goodrich Aerospace as a marketing engineer. After four years at the company in Minneapolis, Northwest Airlines hired Davis in a number of finance roles over five years.
For a brief while, Davis ventured out of the aviation and airline industry to join car rental provider AVIS as the vice president of their financial planning department. In 2002, he would join US Airways as the chief financial officer in Washington DC before being hired in the same role by chemical manufacturer Kraton Corporation in Houston.
His second tenure outside of aviation was also short-lived, as one year afterward, Davis was back at Northwest as their chief financial officer for three and a half years. For four years, he was self-employed, working as one of the managing directors for Bearpath Capital in Washington DC.
In the last decade or so, he has held positions in the boards of Lumexis Corporation, one of the world’s largest makers of in-flight entertainment systems; Anuvu, a satellite-based connectivity provider in aviation and at Genesis Park, an investment corporation in the aviation sector.
Ahead of being hired by Spirit in April 2025 as the president and CEO, Dave Davis worked with Sun County Airlines for seven and a half years as their president and chief financial officer. Besides holding a position with Spirit, he is also on the board of Spanish low-cost airline, Volotea.
Spirit Airlines CEO and President Dave Davis’ salary
Spirit Airlines has hired Dave Davis on an initial three-year employment contract with a base salary of US$950,000 per year. In addition to the basic compensation, he will also be paid a signing-on bonus of US$4 million in two separate installments, along with being eligible for performance-related incentives subject to the airline’s performance next year.
Dave Davis’ compensation structure is very similar to the final payout that was received by his predecessor, Ted Christie. Christie’s basic salary was also US$950,000 for a year, and he would go on to receive a US$4.4 million bonus payout. In comparison to Spirit’s low-cost competitors, the amount was understandably average given their filing for bankruptcy in November 2024.
JetBlue CEO Joanna Geraghty was paid US$6.7 million for the previous fiscal year, a drop over more than 25% from his compensation in 2023-24, largely as a result of B6’s fall in share prices. On the other hand, Frontier Airlines CEO Barry Biffle took home a measly US$1.6 million, taking a massive US$7.1 million pay cut in comparison to his previous term’s payout.
Spirit Airlines’ plan for 2025
Spirit Airlines is looking to bounce back from a poor performance in 2024, in which its net loss amounted to US$1.2 billion. After undergoing a financial restructuring this year, their challenge and objective for the near future is to ensure a sustainable balance of their books while keeping fixed costs as low as they possibly could, while gradually matching its previous flight frequencies.
In May and June 2025, Spirit has slashed over a million seats on its flights. In the next couple of months, they will have a capacity of 3.7 million, almost 25% lower than the 4.9 million seats they had listed for sale for the same months in 2024. In a bid to increase its cash flows, however, the airline is consistently presenting offers to prospective buyers, with recent ones valid for flights till October this year.
Spirit also has 52 aircraft on order and expects to receive some of them this year, potentially taking their overall fleet strength to more than 200 Airbus A320 family planes. With an expanding fleet, 40 new routes have already been announced heading into the summer, while two new destinations, Chattanooga and Columbia, are also set to welcome NK flights.
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