Spirit Airlines met its demise Saturday after a pair of bankruptcies and even talk of a possible White House intervention failed to save it, spelling the end of a low-budget carrier known for taking “a la carte” flying — with fees for everything from checked bags to water — to an extreme.
Spirit grounded what remained of its bright-yellow fleet at 3 a.m. and closed its call centers, leaving travelers to search for flights on its competitors. It was a final disruption for fliers who, since the airline’s founding in its current form in 1992, endured a sometimes rocky relationshipwith the company.
Spirit offered rock-bottom fares, but all you got was a seat. Even minimal creature comforts cost extra.
“That’s the way the customer experience worked. It was somewhere between indifferent and antagonistic,” said aviation analyst Robert Mann. “But that was enough to get people to fly. If the fare was low enough, you would suck it up, take a seat and press on.”
After struggling financially for years and failing in its effort several years ago to merge with rival JetBlue, Spirit said the skyrocketing costs of jet fuel because of the war in Iran proved to be too much.
“Sustaining the business required hundreds of millions of additional dollars of liquidity that Spirit simply does not have and could not procure,” CEO Dave Davis said in a one-page statement announcing the closure. “This is tremendously disappointing and not the outcome any of us wanted.”
The airline said it would automatically process refunds for any flights booked directly with the company, while those who booked using a travel agent should contact the agent for a refund. Spirit’s roughly 17,000 employees and contractors — including more than 2,000 pilots and 5,500 flight attendants — were in line to lose their jobs.
“The pain of this decision will not be felt in boardrooms. It will be felt by pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, dispatchers, and ground crews, and by the families and communities that depend on them,” said Jason Ambrosi, president of the Air Line Pilots Association.
Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy announced measures to support passengers in a statement Saturday, including capped ticket prices and reduced fares on certain routes. “We’ve activated our airline partners to ensure passengers are not stranded, communities maintain route access, fares do not skyrocket, and Spirit’s workforce is connected to new job opportunities,” he said.
President Donald Trump suggested last week that the federal government should “just buy” Spirit Airlines, which has declared bankruptcy twice since 2024. The administration had been floating a $500 million rescue plan that would have given the government a hefty ownership stake in the budget airline — a proposal that drew criticism from some of Trump’s Republican allies, including within his administration.
On Friday morning, reports emerged that the airline was unable to get support for the deal and would soon cease operations. Still, hope for a financial lifeline persisted until the last minute. Trump told reporters at the White House around noon Friday that there would be an announcement pertaining to Spirit within a day or two and suggested that discussions were continuing. He added that the White House had given Spirit a final proposal.
“I guess we’re looking at it. If we could do it, we’d do it, but only if it’s a good deal,” Trump said about a government plan to bail out Spirit Airlines. “But if we can’t make a good deal — no institution’s been able to do it.”
Spirit faced relentless financial pressure as it attracted customers who wanted to fly to Florida for less than $100 but grappled with the same baseline costs as its competitors, analysts said. Its attempt to merge with JetBlue was opposed by the Biden administration and blocked by a U.S. district judge in 2024 on antitrust grounds. The ruling noted that when Spirit entered a market, rival airlines reduce their prices by 7 percent to 11 percent on average.
Spirit announced in March that it was set to emerge from bankruptcy this summer, with a plan to reduce its fleet from what was once more than 200 planes to as few as 75. But then oil prices soared with the war and closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Long before the military conflict, Spirit struggled with bad business decisions, a loss of its business focus and overexpansion, said Henry Harteveldt, an airline industry analyst at Atmosphere Research Group.
Spirit’s core customers, who typically earn less than $80,000 a year, were hardest hit by inflation in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Harteveldt added. Spirit also faced increasing competition from larger carriers and other budget airlines, including Frontier Airlines, which increased its flights in and out of Spirit’s home base of South Florida in recent years.
“So [there’s] no single cause of Spirit’s demise, but Spirit has been teeter-tottering on the verge of shutting down for a long time,” Harteveldt said.
Several domestic airlines — including American, Frontier and United — said they had plans in place to support stranded Spirit customers and employees.
American Airlines said in a statement Saturday it had put “rescue fares” into place on certain Spirit routes. United Airlines said it would offer price-capped one-way tickets on most Spirit routes, while Frontier Airlines said it would offer fare discounts and additional routes to support Spirit customers. United and American invited Spirit workers to apply for jobs.
“Spirit Airlines played an important role in expanding access to affordable travel and bringing more low fares to more people,” Frontier’s Chief Commercial Officer Bobby Schroeter said. “We recognize this is a difficult time for their customers and team members.”
Though it was often skewered for its bare-bones service, Spirit’s corresponding dirt-cheap fares opened up air travel to people who otherwise may not have been able to afford it and helped shape how other airlines competed. Almost all major domestic air carriers now offer no-frills “basic” fares.
It remains to be seen whether the ultra-low-cost carriers that remain in business, including Allegiant Air, Avelo Airlines, Frontier Airlines and Sun Country Airlines, will raise their fares without Spirit in the picture.
“It depends on the competitive environment — if there’s only one budget airline left on a route and whether another budget airline chooses to enter that route,” Harteveldt said. “If there’s no other low-fare competition, regardless of the airline, it’s highly likely that fares will go up, even accounting for the impact of higher jet fuel prices.”
Victoria Craw, Cat Zakrzewski, Michael Birnbaum, Erin Cox and Emily Davies contributed to this report.
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