A company that isn't a going concern should be liquidated immediately. Taxpayer money should not be sunk into something that has no future.

It's a class thing.

Enjoying Spirit Airlines a-la-cart benefits is like enjoying the extra features in an Android phone or using a car to get somewhere quickly instead of waiting around for public transit. If you aren't showing the worlds that you can afford to go without, you aren't upper class.

It's probably the association with Trump, at least to those outside the US. Anything even remotely connected to that arsehole is, almost by definition, to be reviled. If he wanted to save it, there's probably a really good reason not to, without reading any further into the topic.

Winding down is an industry term that means not only stopping operations, but liquidating assets, resolving contracts, dealing with employees, etc. So that notice is a step in the winding down process, and it would seem like one of the easier, and earlier ones.

Just a few hours ago, Spirit execs were saying everything is just fine. At noon yesterday, Trump was saying that a bailout was still likely. (The first time I read about Trump saying that "we" were going to buy Spirit, I thought he meant him personally, or The Trump Organization. Spirit only needed about $500 million, and Trump could afford that.) That nobody wanted to buy a major airline for $500M means it was a really bad deal and not worth saving. They were already in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the "debtor in possession" reorganization mode. Not yet clear if they just went to Chapter 7, liquidation, but that's probably happening within days.

Still, a zero-notice shutdown is a bit much. Some people who have tickets for tomorrow probably went to bed already.

There's still the mechanics of winding down. All the planes have to be flown to suitable storage locations. With such an abrupt shutdown, they'll have mis-positioned aircraft all over their route system. Many planes are probably leased, so the lessor may have to arrange to take custody of the aircraft. It's probably better if the aircraft are leased - there's some lessor with funds to take care of the job and the knowledge of how to arrange it, since a handover and move happens at the end of each aircraft lease. Aircraft Spirit actually owns will have to be moved by a bankruptcy receiver, which is a lawyer trying to run what's left of an airline. Most major airports charge very high parking fees. LAX charges $1000 for the first day, and that goes up to $5000 a day on day four. They're not in the storage business.

There are probably a lot of middle of the night phone calls and meetings going on right now.

It's "orderly", don't you know!

It was a very quick wind down.

It's a fall down. Just like their stock prices.

Jet Blue was for the merger, but Elizabeth Warren and Sean Duffy were against it. That's not a balance sheet problem, it's a problem of not pleasing the people in power.

Low cost carrier. Think Ryanair. Competition from the rest of the market and bad management put them in a bad position, with the most recent war causing unsustainable fuel issues. Other airlines may be able to double/triple their prices in the short term. Spirit's customers may simply choose to not fly.

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/02/nx-s1-5807933/spirit-airlines... describes this in more detail.

Similar to Ryanair in Europe

That’s my experience of every single US airline though…

Airlines are not great business. Margins are not great. Fuel is significant part of their operating costs. And if it goes up too much in too short time the whole model breaks. Less margins you have the more you will be impacted. So if you are operating at edge by default fast move in costs will destroy you.

The immediate cause was rising fuel prices. The other issue sounds like it was poorly ran.

More generally, it is also a low cost carrier at a time when, after years of competing on price, airlines are seeing people willing to pay more for a better experience. All other carriers are expanding their premium options, catering to the affluent part of the K economy (for the first time ever the majority of Delta revenue came from premium cabins over main). Meanwhile, Spirit was dealing on the other side of the K who is also most impacted by increasing inflation, etc... giving Spirit zero ability to raise prices.

I never heard about this company before this morning, so I can't project any second order effect of this closure.

That being said, I suspect many people had never heard about Lehman Brothers before 2008...

Other than ideology, in what way is this a good outcome? For passengers? For workers?

Man wouldn’t it be great if we lived in that world?

can't help but think of the deadweight loss to the US over lack of free market capitalism in terms of bailouts, price supports & subsidies, monopolies, etc. every day we stray further and further from this system we purport to have.

edit: do folks not think more competition would be better for consumers? i'm no stan of capitalism but surely it could be made better, sheesh.

If only they flapped. Maybe they'd still be in the air.

“How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” -Hemmingway

I'm guessing you misinterpreted my comment to assert that we should provide no consumer protections. That was not what I was saying. I'm talking pancakes, you're talking waffles.

How we treat capital and how we treat humans should not be connected to each other, and it's absolutely important that capital not be treated as if it were a person. Corporations are not humans, and we can not bail out investors while we let consumers flail. And we should never bail out corporations under the premise of helping humans, when direct assistance to humans would suffice.

Unfortunately continuing to burn money with no hope of recovery is not a popular strategy among judges and creditor's lawyers. Customers will either get refunds or join the back of the creditor line.

I doubt many people would buy tickets for a flight with a failing airline. That said, shutting down with effectively zero notice is pretty terrible, and they will probably need to do a bunch of repositioning flights, so they could have kept the lights on for one or two more days.

Interesting example since giant sequoias benefit greatly from forest fires...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_sempervirens#Fire_adap...

While it's fair to criticize how this screwed up customers (and perhaps workers), airline shutdowns are often good things, route/airport slots gets freed for example, and airlines with better value (cost or quality wise) can take over.

I don't live in the US but spirit has been the butt of jokes for years.