Ben Baldanza was the former president and CEO of Spirit Airlines, best known for helping pioneer the budget airline model.
- Died: November 5, 2024 (Who else died on November 5?)
- Details of death: Died in Arlington County, Virginia of ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, at the age of 62.
- We invite you to share condolences for Ben Baldanza in our Guest Book.
Ben Baldanza’s legacy
Baldanza was the first U.S-based airline CEO who saw unbundling costs for air travel beyond the basic flight – luggage, food, assigned seats, and more – as a way to provide bargain airfares while still remaining profitable. His innovation helped turn around a struggling Spirit Airlines and created a whole new sector of air travel in the process.
While getting his public affairs master’s degree at Princeton University, Baldanza interned at American Airlines Group, eventually joining the company’s finance department. Through the mid-1990s and early 2000s, he worked for Continental Airlines, Northwest, US Airways, and other firms before landing at Spirit in 2005 as company president and COO, rising to CEO the following year. Baldanza did not invent the “bare fares” model used by Spirit. Rather, he borrowed the idea from Irish ultra-low-cost carrier Ryanair, despite its lack of popularity in the United States.
The idea stuck. Spirit became profitable, reversing its nearly $80 million in annual losses at the time Baldanza took charge. And in the years that followed, almost every other carrier began to adopt the model, too. He served in the airline’s top post until 2016, becoming the public face of Spirit and, in some ways, of budget airlines in general.
Baldanza has been awarded with the Wright Brothers Memorial Trophy, Air Transport World magazine’s Joseph S. Murphy Award for Service to Industry, and was twice named one of the 25 Most Influential People in Business Travel by Business Travel News. He was diagnosed with Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, in 2022.
Notable quote
“I like disrupting things. It might be fun to try that in another industry. It doesn’t mean I’ll get that opportunity, doesn’t mean I will do that, but it certainly would be fun to try that.” — interview with Airways magazine, 2016
Tributes to Ben Baldanza
Full obituary: Aviation Week
