Spirit Airlines shuts down after White House rescue deal falls through

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Washington Post

Updated May 2, 2026 at 3:30 a.m. EDT


Spirit Airlines is shutting down operations effective immediately, the airline said in a statement early Saturday, after a White House proposal to bail out the beleaguered budget carrier fell through.

The shuttering follows “extensive and comprehensive efforts to restructure the business,” the airline said, adding that the recent increase in oil prices and other pressures have “significantly impacted” its prospects. “With no additional funding available to the Company, Spirit had no choice but to begin this wind-down,” it said.

All flights have been canceled, and Spirit passengers should not go to the airport, the statement added. The airline said it would automatically process refunds for any flights booked directly with the company, while those who booked using a travel agent should contact the agent for a refund.

President Donald Trump suggested last week that the federal government should “just buy” Spirit Airlines, which has declared bankruptcy twice since 2024. The administration had been floating a $500 million rescue plan that would have given the government a hefty ownership stake in the budget airline — a proposal that drew criticism from some of Trump’s Republican allies, including within his administration. On Friday morning, reports emerged that the airline was unable to get support for the deal and would soon cease operations.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/05/02/spirit-airlines-flights-shutdown/

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No paywall (gift)

[BidenRocks]

1. A rescue deal?

That was an excuse for chump to grab another headline.
Everything he touches, dies.
He could care less about the laid off workers or stranded passengers.
Fuck your deals! You have no deals!

[Skittles]

2. no he actually wanted buy into the airline

even some repuke assholes cried foul over that fucking proposed grift

[BidenRocks]

3. With OUR money!

[Skittles]

4. well of course

Trump is a fucking con man.

[ClaudetteCC]

6. Jet Blue was willing to purchase it, so was Frontier

https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-urges-dot-to-use-full-authority-to-scrutinize-potential-jetblue-and-spirit-airlines-merger

[IronLionZion]

10. Frontier Spirit has a nice ring to it

[popsdenver]

12. What would be gained by a merger

of the two worst airlines????????????

[jmowreader]

14. Since the two airlines had very similar route maps, not much

[popsdenver]

16. As well as

putrid service..........

[Igel]

17. To the extent it reduced competition,

it would have reduced expenses and helped sustainability.

To the extent that there wasn't overlap, it would have retained competition.

When the merger was turned down because of the huge amount of competition that disallowing it would help maintain (that's deeply sarcastic, by the way) it was pointed out that the result of this would inevitably be Spirit's complete demise. And that it's departure from the market would reduce competition more than the merger would have. But disallowing the merger also preserved jobs, not a small bit of the thinking. (Of course, the shutting down ended jobs *and* put a lot of passengers in a pickle, but while predictable and entailed, it's certainly not a consequence of stopping what would probably have been a sounder outcome. I guess.)

If your default 'setting' is 'mergers, bad' then it's hard to get past that setting default to see further down the road, say, a business default.

[popsdenver]

19. I was thinking

that if there is already a drop off in number of passengers, with the economy bad and getting worse.....and that will hurt all the airlines, but especially the nominal ones first??????

[cstanleytech]

7. "Everything he touches, dies." He's still breathing so it's not everything.

[AZLD4Candidate]

9. It's the Bezos Washington Post as a source. You expect anything but a stroke job for Trump?

[no_hypocrisy]

5. If it had gone otherwise . . . . .

Trump would have used OUR taxpayer dollars to buy a struggling airline.

But an airline has no place in the functions of a federal government.

And we wouldn't have "owned" it anyway.

Trump would have re-named it "Trump Airlines".

And like his prior "Trump Airlines," it would have gone under anyway.

[ck4829]

23. Indeed

[twodogsbarking]

8. Gee, I hope the airline executives are all ok.

[ck4829]

25. They're going to get their golden parachutes I'm sure

[AZLD4Candidate]

11. This would have been more of public liability and private profit. Hooray American style capitalism!

[Crowman2009]

13. It was a god awful airline anyway.

Type up Spirit airlines on YouTube and you will get numerous videos of fist fights and screaming arguments. It made Soul Plane look like a first-class upgrade by comparison.

[jmowreader]

15. There's one group of people I grieve for in this situation

That's all the people who had bought round-trip tickets on Spirit, took their outbound flights, and now are trying to figure out how to get home.

[Igel]

18. I'm not feeling happy for the employees, either. n/t

[ck4829]

21. Same here

[ck4829]

24. What a mess

[EX500rider]

20. Dang, I liked Spirit (at least for short flights)

Have been to Colombia 4 times in the last 5 years, Spirit was $300 r/t out of Tampa, American was $550.
And that was with a carry on & one checked piece of luggage.
For $250 savings I will put up with slightly less leg room & service.

LATAM Colombia was a little cheaper but you had to fly out of Miami. I think they also fly out of Orlando now but still a pain to get there from St Pete.

[ck4829]

22. Golden Age!

[LogDog75]

26. The Art of the Deal

Trump failed Spirit Airlines by not being able to make the deal to save it.

Chalk this up to another of his Art of the Deal failures.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

27. MaddowBlog-Team Trump tries to blame Biden for Spirit Airlines' collapse, but reality gets in the way

Whether Republicans like it or not, the war with Iran pushed fuel prices higher, and this proved to be the death blow for the company.

Team Trump tries to blame Biden for Spirit Airlines’ collapse, but reality gets in the way www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Reality is one thing that Trump is incapable of understanding, recognizing, relating to, and realizing

— Tom Jones (@earl2.bsky.social) 2026-05-04T15:17:02.673Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/team-trump-biden-spirit-airlines-collapse

A couple of weeks ago, when it was clear that Spirit Airlines’ future was in doubt, Donald Trump did what he too often does: He tried to avoid blame for a looming setback by shifting responsibility to one of his Democratic predecessors.....

Nevertheless, in the days that followed, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick led a Trump administration initiative to bail out Spirit Airlines, as part of a deal that would have led the federal government to take a significant ownership stake in the business. A variety of Republicans raised a new round of concerns about state-run capitalism, the private negotiations ultimately failed, and the carrier permanently closed its doors late last week.

One day later, Trump administration officials, led in large part by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, moved away from the president’s effort to blame Obama and instead tried to convince the public of a related claim: This was the Biden administration’s fault.

Sean Duffy on Spirit Airlines: "I think it's important to talk about why we are here today. Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg ... "

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-05-02T16:23:59.743Z

On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also toed the new party line.

BARTIROMO: Treasury was supposed to be doing a deal to save Spirit Airlines. Can you tell us what happened?

BESSENT: This is just more of the mess we inherited from the Biden administration

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-05-03T15:31:34.251Z

....There are, however, two foundational problems. The first, as The Atlantic’s James Surowiecki explained, “If JetBlue’s acquisition of Spirit had been approved, there’s a good chance JetBlue would now be headed into bankruptcy, too.”

The second is that the White House’s pitch is part of a clumsy attempt to answer the question of why exactly Spirit folded. At a press conference on Saturday, Duffy told reporters, “The war was not the impetus for Spirit.”

There’s ample evidence to the contrary. As The Associated Press reported, “Although Spirit had gone bankrupt twice before, the company said high oil prices, which have been rising because of the war with Iran, made it impossible to stay aloft.” NBC News added, “Spirit, which has struggled to maintain consistent profitability since the Covid-19 pandemic, had been looking to emerge from its second bankruptcy in less than a year. But those plans were derailed amid soaring jet fuel costs sparked by the outbreak of the war with Iran.”

If Republicans want to argue that Spirit was facing real challenges before the war with Iran, that’s a fair point. But while they scramble to convince the public that Joe Biden (or, according to some GOP voices, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts) was the main culprit, the fact remains that the war pushed fuel prices higher, and according to Spirit’s own executives, this proved to be the death blow for the company.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

28. MaddowBlog-Team Trump tries to blame Biden for Spirit Airlines' collapse, but reality gets in the way

Whether Republicans like it or not, the war with Iran pushed fuel prices higher, and this proved to be the death blow for the company.

Team Trump tries to blame Biden for Spirit Airlines’ collapse, but reality gets in the way www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

Reality is one thing that Trump is incapable of understanding, recognizing, relating to, and realizing

— Tom Jones (@earl2.bsky.social) 2026-05-04T15:17:02.673Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/team-trump-biden-spirit-airlines-collapse

A couple of weeks ago, when it was clear that Spirit Airlines’ future was in doubt, Donald Trump did what he too often does: He tried to avoid blame for a looming setback by shifting responsibility to one of his Democratic predecessors.....

Nevertheless, in the days that followed, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick led a Trump administration initiative to bail out Spirit Airlines, as part of a deal that would have led the federal government to take a significant ownership stake in the business. A variety of Republicans raised a new round of concerns about state-run capitalism, the private negotiations ultimately failed, and the carrier permanently closed its doors late last week.

One day later, Trump administration officials, led in large part by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, moved away from the president’s effort to blame Obama and instead tried to convince the public of a related claim: This was the Biden administration’s fault.

Sean Duffy on Spirit Airlines: "I think it's important to talk about why we are here today. Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg ... "

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-05-02T16:23:59.743Z

On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also toed the new party line.

BARTIROMO: Treasury was supposed to be doing a deal to save Spirit Airlines. Can you tell us what happened?

BESSENT: This is just more of the mess we inherited from the Biden administration

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2026-05-03T15:31:34.251Z

....There are, however, two foundational problems. The first, as The Atlantic’s James Surowiecki explained, “If JetBlue’s acquisition of Spirit had been approved, there’s a good chance JetBlue would now be headed into bankruptcy, too.”

The second is that the White House’s pitch is part of a clumsy attempt to answer the question of why exactly Spirit folded. At a press conference on Saturday, Duffy told reporters, “The war was not the impetus for Spirit.”

There’s ample evidence to the contrary. As The Associated Press reported, “Although Spirit had gone bankrupt twice before, the company said high oil prices, which have been rising because of the war with Iran, made it impossible to stay aloft.” NBC News added, “Spirit, which has struggled to maintain consistent profitability since the Covid-19 pandemic, had been looking to emerge from its second bankruptcy in less than a year. But those plans were derailed amid soaring jet fuel costs sparked by the outbreak of the war with Iran.”

If Republicans want to argue that Spirit was facing real challenges before the war with Iran, that’s a fair point. But while they scramble to convince the public that Joe Biden (or, according to some GOP voices, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts) was the main culprit, the fact remains that the war pushed fuel prices higher, and according to Spirit’s own executives, this proved to be the death blow for the company.