The Dictatorship
Spirit Airlines says it’s going out of business and is ending operations immediately
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Spirit Airlines, an impish upstart that shook the industry with its irreverent ads and deep discount fares, announced Saturday that it has gone out of business after 34 years.
The ultra-low cost airline that once operated hundreds of daily flights on its bright yellow planes and employed about 17,000 people said it had “started an orderly wind-down of our operations, effective immediately.”
The airline said all flights have been cancelled and customer service is no longer available.
“We are proud of the impact of our ultra-low-cost model on the industry over the last 34 years and had hoped to serve our guests for many years to come,” the announcement said.
Spirit’s abrupt closure — after a potential bailout from the Trump administration fell through — left thousands of customers in the lurch. The company urged customers with flight tickets not to go to the airport and said it would automatically process refunds for flights but could not reimburse incidental travel costs associated with canceled trips.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said at a news conference Saturday that other airlines have agreed to cap ticket prices for Spirit customers looking to rebook canceled flights for a limited time, including United, Delta, JetBlue and Southwest.
There were “a number of ideas being floated on how the government could step in and be helpful to Spirit Airlines,” Duffy said, but ultimately it was a creditor issue.
He said the Biden administration’s decision to block a merger between Spirit and JetBlue in 2023 was in part to blame for Spirit’s demise. “History has judged the denial of the merger between JetBlue and Spirit through the Biden administration with, I think, a view that it was a massive mistake,” he said.
Duffy also denied that the Iran war, which has sent jet fuel prices skyrocketing and led several international airlines to cut some routes, exacerbated the airline’s woes.
“Spirit was in dire straits long before the war with Iran. Multiple times they had filed for bankruptcy,” Duffy said. “The war was not the impetus.”
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.