March 19, 2004
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

Spirit Airlines said it will place an order today for 35 jets from
Airbus Industrie for about $2 billion with an option to buy 60 more.
The total deal is valued at about $5 billion.

The deal could have major implications for Detroit travelers. New
planes would allow Spirit to add domestic and international routes,
including some from Metro Airport.

This is the single-biggest plane order placed by Spirit, Detroit
Metro's biggest low-fare carrier.

The 124-passenger Airbus A319 and 220-passenger A321 would replace
Spirit's entire fleet of 32 Boeing 150-passenger MD-80s.

Spirit will buy an equal number of A319 and A321 planes, spokeswoman
Laura Bennett said. The first plane is expected to arrive in March
2005 with the remaining spread through the next five years.

The order comes less than a month after Spirit raised $125 million
from Los Angeles-based private equity fund Oaktree Capital Management
LLC to expand its flights and routes and to update its fleet.

"Spirit already has one of the lowest costs of operation in the
airline industry, and the new Airbus aircraft, which are
technologically advanced and fuel-efficient, will assure our continued
leadership," Jacob Schorr, chief executive officer of Miramar,
Fla.-based Spirit, said in a statement.

Spirit has 115 daily flights, 20 to 25 of them from Detroit. Spirit
had said earlier it wants to have at least 200 daily flights within
five years with 40 to 50 from Detroit.

"Clearly, this has been in the works for many months," said Kevin
Mitchell, chairman of Business Travel Coalition, a lobby for business
travelers. "There is a very determined and thought-out strategy to
expand and grow."

The new planes give Spirit the ammunition to fight larger airlines
like Northwest Airlines, Mitchell said.

Spirit recently got approval to fly to 11 countries: Aruba, the
Bahamas, Canada, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua and Panama.Metro Airport is
expected to get some of those international flights.

Bennett said the planes would have two-class seating: Spirit Plus and
regular economy class.

The Airbus 320 family of aircraft is popular with low-fare carriers
like Spirit. JetBlue Airways flies the A320s and its costs are among
the lowest in the industry.

The new planes would help Spirit lower its costs further, Mitchell
said.