Spirit Airlines: who is the owner of the company and how can the incident affect its value?

This weekend, passengers abroad on a Spirit Airlines flight from Montego Bay, Jamaica, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, suffered a nightmare experience that luckily ended without any injuries. The passengers were told quickly after take off that they should prepare for a water landing after the flight team had noticed a mechanical issue. These measures were taken out of precaution rather than necessity, but they are standard practice in the industry, though these events are exceedingly rare. After the announcement was made for passengers to put on their life jackets, the pilot landed the aircraft back in Montego Bay, with a new plane prepared to take the shaken passengers to their final destination under an hour later. The airline has not released a statement about the incident as of Monday, 27 May. They did tell CBS News that they would be looking into the matter and apologized to the affected customers.

The financial impact of the incident

Though Boeing has made headlines for various aircraft failures this year, the plane involved in this incident was an Airbus A321. Spirit Airlines is a publically traded company, with the stock value at one of its lowest points since it went public in 2011. Currently valued at $3.73, and with the stock trading in the green today, it does not appear that the incident over the weekend has affected its price in a substantive way. When looking at the financial institutions with the greatest stake in Spirit, The Vangaurd Group owns 9.52 percent and 7.69 percent belongs to BlackRock.