Purple Pawn posted a news item on March 30 about the CEO for Spirit Airlines being a boardgamer and how that helped him run an airline. The quote is as follows:

“For boardgamegeek.com, I put together a list of games that I think you’d need to play well if you were going to run an airline,” he says. “The skills translate. In both realms, you use negotiation, forward planning, strategic thinking, close attention to detail and tactics against competitors to give you an edge.”

Ben Baldanza (diemacher on BoardGameGeek.com) did indeed put up the list of games he mentions, which offers a very interesting look at the mindset of this airline CEO (Machiavellian Renaissance politics have nothing on this field, apparently). I am kind of disappointed that no roleplaying games were offered as a source of skill development for such a position, though maybe the fact that most RPGs tend to support cooperative gameplay instead of head-to-head competition would put them at a bit of a disadvantage (there’s another post buried in that sentence, but I’ll leave it be for now). I guess it’s kind of cool to know that a fellow gamer geek is the one in charge, even if it’s Spirit that we’re talking about here.

I followed the link to the full story on the New York Times to read the context of the snippet. The story, titled “Don’t Come Crying to This Airline,” is about Spirit Airlines business model and approach to air travel, or lack thereoff depending on where you sit (aisle and exit row seats will cost more).

Spirit Airlines is a love-it-or-hate-it kind of airline, the king of the super low fare, no frills, nickel-and-dime-you-for-every-single-thing-beyond-the-air-you-breathe airlines. I’ve had my ups and downs with Spirit, completely swearing them off last year when my mother had a problem with lost luggage and the Ft. Lauderdale Airport team all but said, “So what?”, to being pleased with their service earlier this year when I had to fly to Puerto Rico fairly last-minute and their fares were the lowest (by far). I guess you could say I am in the middle now, not liking their practices and attitude, but certainly willing to shut the heck up for a really low fare.

Considering Spirit is already charging customers a $10 fee for booking anywhere else than a Spirit ticket counter at the airport, the article offers an interesting insight into the way this company runs and why lower expectations are the way to go in order to have a better experience.