Be kinde to folk. This changeth the whole habitat.
- Manlobbi
Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy
No. of Recommendations: 4
After 30+ years, they’re finally gone. Heckuva job, Senator Warren.
No. of Recommendations: 4
From what I have seen, from various sources, about the quality of Spirit's customer service, the consensus may be "good riddance".
Meanwhile American and Delta say "yay, rid of a competitor".
Steve
No. of Recommendations: 5
From what I have seen, from various sources, about the quality of Spirit's customer service, the consensus may be "good riddance".
I’ve never flown via Spirit, but Know many who have.
Their experiences were uniformly poor, and the money they thought they were saving was whittled away significantly by unexpected charges and fees.
I think Spirit’s natural passenger base was composed of young people traveling without kids, and whose luggage consisted of a single backpack.
Fly like that and bring your own sandwich and bottle of water- you were probably happy with the experience.
No. of Recommendations: 2
Fly like that and bring your own sandwich and bottle of water- you were probably happy with the experience.The bottom line is they didn't charge enough to cover their costs. No business is going to flourish like that. The 6pm "news" quoted SecTrans Duffy as blaming Biden, of course, for blocking the merger with Jet Blue. What would have happened if the merger had gone through? The Spirit honchos would have received a 7 or 8 figure "change of control" payout, while most of the workers would have been tossed as redundant to Jet Blue's existing staff.
Of course, we old phartz remember Pan Am, TWA, Eastern, Braniff. I actually flew on the Braniff 72 that had the Calder paint job.
Braniff Boeing 727-291 N408BN Alexander Calder Bicentennial Promotional Film November 1975https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSIGbcxT4e8Steve
No. of Recommendations: 18
"After 30+ years, they’re finally gone. Heckuva job, Senator Warren." - Dumbass Dope
Spirit Airlines went under because they couldn't afford to charge low fares with ever increasing fuel costs.
Senator Warren had absolutes nothing to do with the rise in fuel costs. President Trump is directly responsible for that.
But you are in a cult so you have to ignore rising fuel costs and laughing twist yourself into a knot to blame someone else.
No. of Recommendations: 3
Trump causes another bankruptcy!
#SO-MUCH-WINNING
No. of Recommendations: 5
Spirit Airlines' attempt to emerge from bankruptcy was derailed by surging jet fuel prices caused by Trumps idiotic War in Iran.
Spirit was spending an additional $15 million on fuel per week as a result of Trumps stupidity.
America First!?...
https://bsky.app/profile/plurgasm2.bsky.social/pos...
No. of Recommendations: 1
America First!?..
It's good for the other airlines. Last night, the "news" reported American is shifting to larger aircraft, on some routes, due to the expected increase in business, from Spirit going toes up.
Steve
No. of Recommendations: 1
"After 30+ years, they’re finally gone. Heckuva job, Senator Warren." - Dumbass Dope
Cue Dope. Send in the clowns.
No. of Recommendations: 17
After 30+ years, they’re finally gone. Heckuva job, Senator Warren.
Hmmm, let’s follow this line of thought.
Jet Blue wanted a $3.8 billion acquisition of Spirit Airlines.
The Biden administration’s DOJ sued Jet Blue because they thought the acquisition violated antitrust laws.
Senator Warren said that she also thought the acquisition violated antitrust laws.
In 2024, a U.S. federal judge concurred with the DOJ and prohibited the acquisition.
In 2025, Trump became president.
Trump could have told his DOJ to allow the acquisition, but apparently the DOJ was busy losing frivolous retribution cases that either couldn’t get an indictment or were thrown out of court. Priorities, apparently, being on pictures of sea shells.
Spirit Airlines then requested a bailout deal from the Trump administration, but apparently Trump was too busy getting his picture on coins and passports, renaming buildings and airports (oh, the irony) after himself, getting a swimming pool contractor to fix the Mall reflecting pool, tearing down the White House, enriching himself, and starting a war that no one wanted which caused gas prices to blow up like a Molotov Cocktail (more irony).
Spirit Airlines went broke, high gas prices being the final nail in the coffin.
Faux News ran a story blaming the Spirit Airline bankruptcy on Senator Warren because she agreed with the Biden DOJ and a federal judge.
Dope1, fell for the story hook, line, and sinker.
If I tried to sell this story to a movie producer, I’d be thrown out of the office for telling a story that is less believable than the Fifth Element (which was, at least, a little entertaining).
No. of Recommendations: 2
Dope1, fell for the story hook, line, and sinker.
Hopelessly gullible tool.
No. of Recommendations: 14
After 30+ years, they’re finally gone. Heckuva job, Senator Warren.
The demise of Spirit Airlines is a nothingburger. There are other airlines to buy the planes, hire the crews, make more seats available if that is what the public wants. The end of Spirit airlines does not mean the end of the airline industry, and government resources should not be spent to prevent a company which is essentially economically meaningless to continue (especially when it has been bankrupt twice in recent years.)
This is to differentiate it from the bailout of the banks and the auto industry, both of which were in danger of total collapse, and both of which would presage a deep and harmful depression in the American economy for years, possibly decades to come.
I don’t know if the merger between JetBlue and Spirit would have been a bad thing or not, it’s telling that the DoJ ruled that it would, that the courts ruled that it would, and that there was little support for it politically from either party at the time. It’s too bad that people will lose their jobs, but jobs will return in other forms, as they do if the market decides, or not if it doesn’t. Meanwhile we have unemployment insurance to cushion the blow, one part of the social safety net we offer in an advance society.
Meanwhile, it makes good fodder for comedians one last time:
Just a few hours ago, Spirit Airlines permanently shutdown midflight. The airline stranded thousands of passengers at airports with no employees manning any of the check-in desks. Spirit said they were proud they were still maintaining their normal level of service.
No. of Recommendations: 2
"After 30+ years, they’re finally gone. Heckuva job, Senator Warren." - Dumbass Dope
Airlines have been failing since well before Warren, and God and Savior Trump, were born. I can't recall, now, which recession it was, where there were a string of airline bankruptcies. One analyst noted that, since the beginning of aviation, all US airlines, taken together, have lost money. I wonder if airlines have topped dotcoms for capital destruction? Last week, Cenk was talking with one of the reporters from Dropsite News. Interesting divergence of opinion. Cenk thinks AI will tip the US into a crushing depression, by putting so many "knowledge workers" out of work. The guy from Dropsite is expecting the vast majority of AI companies to default. Maybe both are right?
Steve
No. of Recommendations: 14
After 30+ years, they’re finally gone. Heckuva job, Senator Warren.
Spirit Airlines CEO Dave Davis refuted the trump administration's entire narrative before Duffy and Bessent even finished their spin cycle, making clear that spiking fuel costs from trump's war with Iran were what actually killed the airline, not anything Biden did. The administration's argument is that the Biden DOJ blocked a proposed JetBlue merger in 2023 and that decision sealed Spirit's fate. It's a tidy story, except a Reagan-appointed federal judge was the one who actually killed the merger on antitrust grounds, which is a detail the trump team would prefer you forget.
The reality check gets worse from there. Trump's own team spent weeks trying to put together a $500 million government bailout before their own lawyers killed it for legal reasons. So the administration that claims to hate government intervention in business was quietly trying to nationalize a budget airline, and failed at that too.
The bigger picture is one the blame game is conveniently drowning out. Spirit is the first major American airline in 25 years to collapse because of financial problems, and it went down in the middle of a war-driven fuel crisis battering the entire industry. Now, Delta is cutting all food and drink service on roughly 450 short-haul flights under 350 miles, starting May 19, framing it as an operational efficiency move. Maybe it is. But when the country's biggest budget carrier just shut down overnight and a legacy carrier is quietly stripping amenities from economy passengers, it starts to feel less like routine cost management and more like an industry quietly bracing for something worse. First class keeps their drinks, of course.
