{"id":422470,"date":"2026-05-02T22:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T22:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/422470\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T22:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T22:58:10","slug":"political-blame-game-begins-and-passengers-left-adrift-after-spirit-ceases-operations-airline-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/422470\/","title":{"rendered":"Political blame game begins and passengers left adrift after Spirit ceases operations | Airline industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

US airlines and government officials battled on Saturday to deal with stranded passengers and stricken employees after discount carrier Spirit Airlines abruptly ceased operations<\/a> \u2013 and a political and business blame game got under way over the collapse of the low-cost carrier.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have a flight scheduled with Spirit Airlines, don\u2019t show up at the airport; there will be no one here to assist you,\u201d the US secretary of transportation, Sean Duffy, warned at a press conference after laying out measures for customers booked with the Florida-based company to obtain refunds or find discounted flights on other airlines.<\/p>\n

Spirit\u2019s airport check-in desks sat empty across the country on Saturday after the company went out of business<\/a> in the early hours, posting on its website that after 34 years of flying it had \u201cstarted an orderly wind-down of our operations, effective immediately\u201d.<\/p>\n

At the Orlando international airport overnight, a digital departure display sign was filled with bright red notifications of canceled Spirit flights.<\/p>\n

There were no more Spirit planes in the air, with their distinctive bright yellow paint, after the last flight landed in Dallas, Texas, after midnight and Spirit\u2019s management announced it was the end, after talks for a government rescue failed.<\/p>\n

The Spirit president and CEO, Dave Davis, told the Wall Street Journal<\/a> that it had not been his intention for the airline to leave travelers with bookings out on a limb.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t intentionally sell any tickets thinking we weren\u2019t going to be here,\u201d he said. \u201cWe thought we were going to get the liquidity we needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

But plans were upended. Traveler Angela Moreno told NBC News<\/a> that she was booked to fly from Fort Lauderdale in Florida to Nashville, Tennessee, for a wedding.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole family is going there from different states, so it\u2019s very shocking,\u201d she told the TV news outlet. \u201cThere\u2019s many people who cannot attend the wedding as of now.\u201d With tickets on competing airlines priced at $600, she said it was unlikely she\u2019d make it, adding: \u201cI hope the best for those people who really needed that flight.\u201d<\/p>\n

On social media platforms, where travelers often go to vent about delayed or canceled flights, many sent nostalgic posts.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoodbye SpiritAirlines. Those of us in the \u2018D\u2019 (Detroit), or previously known as your Second Hub of #DTW, will miss ya,\u201d said @IUTruthtellers2 on X. Others posted nostalgic stories and added\u201cRIP\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey truly were one of the last cheap \u2018get me there as fast and cheap as possible\u2019 options,\u201d Reddit user AioliUpset7805 wrote on a thread, adding: \u201cI\u2019ll miss them.\u201d<\/p>\n

A political blame game erupted. Duffy said that the war in Iran, which has almost doubled the price of jet fuel, wasn\u2019t to blame for Spirit\u2019s collapse and that the company was \u201cin dire straits long before the war with Iran\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cMultiple times they had filed for bankruptcy. Their model wasn\u2019t working,\u201d he added. \u201cThey couldn\u2019t get the fiscal health.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republican fingers pointed at the Biden administration, which opposed a $3.8bn sale of Spirit to JetBlue, citing a risk of higher airfares, with a federal court in 2024 blocking the takeover<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Spirit Airlines\u2019 self-service check-in area at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood international airport after the company ceased operations on 2 May 2026. Photograph: Giorgio Viera\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cBiden took the unprecedented step of using the Dept of Transportation AND the DOJ to block a merger of JetBlue and faltering Spirit,\u201d the Republican Kentucky representative Thomas Massie posted on X<\/a>. \u201cThat block and high fuel prices have led to Spirit\u2019s demise.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Democratic US senator Elizabeth Warren countered, saying: \u201cSpiking fuel prices from Trump\u2019s war was the nail in the coffin for twice-bankrupted Spirit airline \u2026 Republicans<\/a> are desperate to shift blame from higher costs hitting families.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her post on X<\/a> also said: \u201cFWIW [for what it\u2019s worth], JetBlue merger failed because a judge, appointed by Ronald Reagan, said the deal was illegal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Duffy scorned Democrats<\/a> whom he cited for hailing the interventions in the deal as a \u201cvictory for US travelers\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank a Democrat,\u201d Duffy posted on X<\/a>. \u201cJoe Biden and [then transportation secretary] Pete Buttigieg bragged about blocking the JetBlue\u2013Spirit merger \u2026 The very deal that could have saved Spirit Airlines. The result: Less competition, customers scrambling, employees losing jobs. You can\u2019t make this stuff up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talks to bail out the company stalled last week when creditors including Ken Griffin\u2019s Citadel LLC, Ares Management Corp and Cyrus Capital opposed a government plan to take 90% of the company in exchange for a $500m bailout, reported CBS News<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The lenders made a counterproposal but no agreement resulted. The creditors said in a letter seen by the New York Times that they did not see how the airline could survive and urged its board to wind it down.<\/p>\n

Duffy added on Saturday that there was potential for a deal with the government, but \u201cit had to be a good deal,\u201d and the talks\u2019 failure was down to \u201ca creditor issue\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAgain, they have the final say of whether they want to do a deal with the government,\u201d Duffy said. \u201cBut also from the government\u2019s perspective, we oftentimes don\u2019t have a half a billion dollars laying around in a spare account that we can put into a bailout of an airline. So there was creative thinking on how it could happen. Those two things never materialized.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spirit operated throughout the US, Latin America and the Caribbean, after being founded in 1983 in Detroit as Charter One Airlines.<\/p>\n

The historic Marine Air Terminal at LaGuardia Airport was Spirit\u2019s hub in New York and on Saturday the small art deco building was a ghost town. A notice on the door declared the airline was no more and passengers who had shown up that morning hoping to catch a last flight had been turned away.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can only imagine how many millions of families [there are] out there where vacations are now out of reach,\u201d Reddit user BigBubby305 said, adding that the price difference between Spirit and carriers such as Delta and American Airlines was, at times, more than $1,000 for a set of tickets for their family.<\/p>\n

A Reddit user who said they were a Spirit pilot out of Las Vegas, posted: \u201cI always took great pride in knowing we were saving people money and allowing those to travel who couldn\u2019t afford to otherwise \u2026 To shut down forever tonight has been one of the saddest experiences of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spirit had around 4,000 domestic flights scheduled through 15 May, according to the aviation data analytics firm Cirium.<\/p>\n

Reuters contributed reporting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US airlines and government officials battled on Saturday to deal with stranded passengers and stricken employees after discount…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-422470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}