Panicked passengers, travel agents, other airlines, and even the federal government scrambled to find alternative flights for thousands of stranded flyers after Spirit Airlines’ sudden shutdown.
The low-cost airline ceased all operations on Saturday. It is the first major business victim of President Donald Trump’s war with Iran: the soaring cost of jet fuel finally pushed Spirit over the edge.
“We regret to inform you that Spirit Airlines has ceased global operations,” read a sign for stranded passengers at New York’s LaGuardia Airport on Saturday. “All Spirit flights have been canceled, and customer service is no longer available.”
This is the first time in 25 years that a major American airline has shut down because it ran out of money. The budget airline was close to emerging from its second bankruptcy this year when the soaring cost of jet fuel triggered by the choked Strait of Hormuz sent it plummeting back into the red.
Spirit’s last-ditch effort to secure help from the federal government failed when a potential $500 million deal in exchange for a 90 percent stake in the company fell through. The company was reportedly unable to secure adequate support from the government and key bondholders.
Trump, who had boasted earlier in the week about the U.S. government potentially owning part of the airline, said the government had delivered a “final proposal.” It wasn’t clear exactly where negotiations broke down, but some lawmakers were critical of taxpayers getting stuck with the bill of a failing airline.
Some passengers, unaware of what had happened, were still arriving at the Spirit window at LaGuardia on Saturday, including a family heading to a close relative’s funeral, CNN reported.
Another family planning to travel back home to Michigan after a vacation at Florida’s Walt Disney World decided to rent a car for the 17-hour trip. “We’re just going to take the drive home,” Linda Domka told WESH-2 TV in Orlando. “It’s going to be long.”
Frontier, Southwest, American, United, JetBlue, and Delta Air Lines were reaching out with ticket offers outlined in a stack of memos at the Spirit window, including “capped rescue fares,” for stranded flyers, CNN reported.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy reported on X that the federal government was coordinating with airlines to “bring relief to Spirit customers and its workforce” following the carrier’s collapse. He detailed offers of capped airline fares and discounted rebooking options, along with support for employees now out of a job.
Some airlines were offering suddenly-fired Spirit workers “preferential employment interviews to ensure they jump the queue” into a potential new job, noted a statement from the Transportation Department.
