Spirit Airlines contains costs, delivers on margins, plans 30% growth in 2015 as 14 aircraft arrive

Spirit Airlines delivered strong financial results for CY2014 and 4Q2014 even as its unit revenues were pressured during the last three months of the year by industry pricing action driven in part by lower fuel costs and the sunset of the Wright Amendment that had limited Southwest's ability to operate certain long haul flights from Dallas Love Field.

The airline continues to face unit revenue headwinds during 1Q2015, caused by industry pricing pressure during off-peak periods. But at the same time Spirit is projecting a favourable unit cost performance, which should allow it to still deliver strong margins for the quarter.

Some of the unit revenue challenges could ease later in 2015 as subsequent quarters do not contain as many off peak days, and none of the pressure is triggering any changes to Spirit's growth projections for 2015, which include capacity expansion of roughly 30.4%.