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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFILE – A Spirit Airlines Airbus A320 prepares to take off from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Jan. 19, 2021, in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (AP Photo\/Wilfredo Lee, File)<\/p>\n
The announcement comes after two bankruptcy filings in as many years that allowed Spirit to repay lenders. That was followed in recent months by a final, mad-dash scramble to save money by cutting routes, squeezing concessions from unions and pursuing a potential financing deal with the Trump administration that could have provided a lifeline had it panned out.<\/p>\n
But in the end, higher jet fuel prices triggered by the Iran war drained cash from the business at an accelerating pace, forcing it to call it quits.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is tremendously disappointing and not the outcome any of us wanted,\u201d Davis said.<\/p>\n
From chartered tours to unbundled fares<\/p>\n
It began as Charter One Airlines, which ran vacation tours in the early 80s, then grew in popularity and profits two decades later with no-frills \u201cunbundled\u201d fares allowing travelers to forgo basic services \u2014 bag handling, seat selection, even the printing of tickets \u2014 or pay extra.<\/p>\n
Proudly penny-pinching and irritatingly so for many passengers, Spirit was for years run by the famously frugal Ben Baldanza, who ordered his burgers plain, bristled at paying extra for pickles he didn\u2019t want, and flew in the same cramped seats as his customers. He was unapologetic about the airline\u2019s nickel-and-diming them, saying the issue wasn\u2019t that Spirit was cheap, but that passengers were seeing an itemized bill for the first time \u2014 and didn\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n
For all the complaints, though, Spirit\u2019s model became so influential that giant airlines with decades more operating history and global destinations found they had to follow suit by slashing prices and introducing \u201cbasic economy\u201d fares.<\/p>\n
On its final day of operations, Spirit had safely flown more than 50,000 passengers, a company spokesperson said. The airline was also working to get more than 1,300 crew members back home. About 17,000 employees \u2014 some with more than 25 years at the airline \u2014 learned Friday they had lost their jobs, many finding out through media reports, the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
In a memo Saturday to members, the Spirit flight attendants union acknowledged the end of the airline and the toll on workers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the country has had a blast making Spirit the butt of the joke, we\u2019ve built a strength together that could withstand anything that anyone throws at us,\u201d it said. \u201cAnd that is no joke.\u201d<\/p>\n
The provocation playbook<\/p>\n
Despite its abrupt end, Spirit left behind a reputation that was impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n
Kendria Talton, who flew Friday on Spirit from Dallas to Atlanta with her daughter for a dance competition, arrived at the airport Saturday trying to find a new way home.<\/p>\n
Talton said she had flown Spirit multiple times because of the price. \u201cOther than that, I mean nobody even likes Spirit,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019ve always talked about Spirit for years.\u201d<\/p>\n
A key part of that image came from its bold, over-the-top ads that some critics slammed as tasteless and indeed sometimes backfired.<\/p>\n
After the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, the company ran a \u201cCheck Out the Oil on Our Beaches\u201d ad, playing on the double entendre of suntan oil and the real black stuff.<\/p>\n
Next up was a \u201cWeiner Sale\u201d after New York Congressman Anthony Weiner was caught in a sexting scandal, an ad that also included the line, \u201cfares just too hard to resist.\u201d Later came its infamous \u201cMILF Sale,\u201d referring to \u201cMany Islands, Low Fares,\u201d but also referencing, with a wink and a nod, to the sexual acronym.<\/p>\n
Ironically, Spirit was also taken down by its own success as more traditional airlines mimicked its offering and began to steal its customers with their own low fares.<\/p>\n
The unraveling<\/p>\n
Spirit had been struggling with losses for years, but its going-out-of-business announcement still came as a shock.<\/p>\n
Just a few months earlier this year, Spirit said it would likely emerge from its second bankruptcy in the late spring or early summer after striking a preliminary deal with lenders.<\/p>\n
Then the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran four days later, sending global crude prices soaring above $100. Gasoline prices followed closely behind and jet fuel prices more than doubled in some markets.<\/p>\n
\n\t\tWinnipeg Free Press | Newsletter\n\t<\/p>\n
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Spirit struggled especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, amid rising operational costs and its mounting debt. By its first Chapter 11 filing in November 2024, Spirit had lost more than $2.5 billion since the start of 2020.<\/p>\n
University of Houston student Angelina Deruelle, 23, was at Fort Lauderdale\u2013Hollywood International Airport on Friday, Spirit\u2019s final day of operations, after her flight to Texas was canceled. She said the loss of the airline as an affordable travel option would be difficult to accept.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like Spirit is just affordable, simple, nothing too fancy,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s just like home.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Associated Press journalists Jeff Amy in Atlanta, Michelle Chapman in New York and Daniel Kozin in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spirit Airlines, the scrappy discounter that once rattled the industry with cheeky ads and rock-bottom fares, took its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-643677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}