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Spirit Airlines, known for its bright yellow planes, announced in the wee hours on Saturday that it was "winding down its global operations, effective immediately," with all flights canceled and customer service no longer available.
After its last-minute talks with creditors and the White House collapsed, the low-cost carrier succumbed to crushing fuel prices. The overnight shutdown of Spirit Airlines left thousands of passengers and hundreds of crew members stranded.
"The recent material increase in oil prices and other pressures on the business have significantly impacted Spirit's financial outlook," read a statement from the company, which has been in and out of bankruptcy since 2024; the White House was considering a $500 million bailout.
Launched in 1992, Spirit Airlines was one of the first low-cost carriers in the US. It carried over 28 million passengers between February 2025 and January 2026, according to official data.
Spirit Airlines CEO Dave Davis apologised to passengers whose flights were being cancelled. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Davis said, “We didn’t intentionally sell any tickets thinking we weren’t going to be here…We thought we were going to get the liquidity we needed.”
Spirit’s last day: How it went down?
Davis said the carrier tried to avoid shutdown chaos and didn’t intend to harm its passengers. Spirit began by canceling certain late-evening flights on Fridays and then terminated the red-eyes — a move to ensure the planes were on the ground and crew members checked into their hotels when the airline announced it had ceased operations, as per the report in The Wall Street Journal.
Executives decided upon Saturday as the time to call it quits, to avoid ending flights on a busier travel day. The shutdown announcement could not be made well in advance as it would have led to more chaos—vendors might stop providing services, crews could stop showing up, aircraft could be scattered in foreign countries, and frustrated customers would vent their anger to airport gate agents.
“The wind-down has to be orderly. The only way to do that is to do it all at once,” Davis said.
Customers who booked flights through Spirit using credit cards are set to receive refunds automatically
An initial group of about 150 employees will help close up shop, including getting over 1,000 crew members back home.
In the coming months, Spirit’s remaining planes and aircraft parts will be sold, along with its headquarters and other real estate to repay creditors.
Others not far behind
When Davis joined the airline last year, his task was to get the airline on a firm footing after its merger with JetBlue was blocked and a previous bankruptcy hadn’t addressed some big problems.
But the war in Iran sent jet-fuel prices soaring, adding tens of millions of dollars a month in expenses and clouding Spirit’s future. Some industry officials argue it was always going to end this way for Spirit.
Davis said, however, that Spirit’s plan would have worked, if not for surging fuel costs. He also believes his airline isn’t the only one in jeopardy.
“Everybody is burning cash—we just had a smaller pile to start with,” he said. “They’re not that far behind us in the race.”
White House response
"The president was like a dog on a bone trying to figure out a way to keep Spirit afloat. In the end, this was a creditor issue. But also from the government's perspective, we often don't have half a billion dollars lying around in a spare account that we can put into a bailout of an airline,” US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told the media.
He blamed the Joe Biden administration for blocking a proposed merger between Spirit and JetBlue in March 2024 and assured ticket holders that they would get refunds.
Affected passengers, crew
While Spirit has promised refunds to its customers, other airlines – including American, Delta, United and JetBlue – mobilised to help the stranded passengers and crew members.
They offered what some dubbed "rescue fares" to those waking up with cancelled itineraries.
United Airlines claimed to help customers book over 14,000 tickets in 12 hours even as some airlines said they would increase the number of flights or schedule larger planes in and out of airports where Spirit had a significant presence. Carriers also sought to support marooned Spirit staff – and hire them.
The company had nearly 7,500 employees at the end of last year, according to filings. Unions representing them slammed the failure to reach a deal.
"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 the Air Line Pilots Association.
— With Inputs from AFP
English (US) ·