‘Godspeed my friend’ as terminals go dark
Spirit Airlines rolled into kiosks at New York’s LaGuardia Airport on May 2, hours after the carrier closed.
Leslie Josephs/CNBC
BALTIMORE/NEW YORK — Spirit Airlines’ last flights on Friday afternoon were hours away. Jeremiah Burton was hours away from his first.
“This is my first time flying,” Burton, a 45-year-old air conditioning and heating technician, told CNBC at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on Friday, shortly before flying to New Orleans to visit his daughter and her newborn twins.
“Honestly, I went online and Googled the cheapest flight ticket,” he said, adding that he paid about $500 for the trip late last month. He was scheduled to return on May 6.
While Burton was waiting for his flight, Spirit was making final preparations for the suspension of flights overnight; This ended a three-decade period that provided discounted air travel to millions of people in the United States and as far away as Peru. Spirit canceled international flights on Thursday to avoid stranding passengers, planes and flight crews. The airline said it was flying more than 50,000 people a day until its collapse.
Spirit bondholders rejected the Trump administration’s 11th-hour bailout offer, which could have included $500 million to keep the struggling airline afloat. The deal would put the government ahead of claims by other bondholders and give it up to a 90% stake in the airline.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called Spirit CEO Dave Davis to tell him there was no agreement and that bondholders and the government were far from an agreement, according to a person familiar with the matter. Bondholders sent a letter to Spirit’s board confirming that the end was near.
Terminals are getting quieter
An “Operational Update” message displays at the self-check-in kiosk at Luis Munoz Marin International Airport after Spirit Airlines announced it was ceasing operations early Saturday, amid an impasse in talks with some creditors over a $500 million government rescue plan, Carolina, Puerto Rico, May 2, 2026
REUTERS/Ricardo Arduengo
Before dawn on Saturday, Spirit’s website and app were covered with the message that operations had ended. “To our guests: All flights have been canceled and customer service is no longer available,” it said.
At noon, LaGuardia’s Marine Air Terminal, an Art Deco facility that opened in 1940 and was home to Pan Am’s Clippers and, most recently, Spirit at the New York airport, was nearly silent.
Cibo Express closed half a day early because there were no customers to serve. CNBC saw the last one Transportation Security Administration officer sent home early. The screens above the yellow kiosks read: “We regret to inform you that Spirit Airlines has ceased its global operations.”
“It has been an honor to bring friends and families closer together for 34 years,” it said at the bottom, along with a QR code showing next steps.
United Airlines, Border Airlines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airlines and others said they were capping fares to get passengers home. United said about 14,000 Spirit customers booked tickets through United on Saturday. JetBlue also announced plans to expand its program in Fort Lauderdale with a number of new services from Cali, Colombia to Nashville, Tennessee.
Challenges that grow like a snowball
While things came to a head this week with reduced access to cash, Spirit’s problems had been going on for years. It was profitable in the 2010s and grew rapidly as customers filled the planes. However, he last made money in 2019.
The carrier faced intense competition from richer and giant rivals. Delta Airlines, United Airlines And American Airlines.
Spirit has also been under pressure from its own bare-bones fares, rising costs, the botched acquisition of JetBlue Airways, which the Biden Justice Department successfully challenged, and an engine failure that caused many of its jets to be grounded. Airlines have become more reliant on high-spending customers who pay thousands of dollars for luxurious, premium cabins. It has been stated that the recent increase in jet fuel prices due to the war in Iran is a challenge that the airline cannot overcome.
Last August, Spirit filed for bankruptcy protection for the second time in less than a year, and analysts said part of the reason was that it didn’t do enough to restructure the airline, cut costs and avoided tough decisions after its first filing in 2024. Weeks before it hoped to avoid bankruptcy, it faced expensive fuel trouble.
Spirit Airlines customer service area at LaGuardia Airport’s Marine Air Terminal in New York.
Leslie Josephs/CNBC
The carrier said about 17,000 direct and indirect employees lost their jobs due to the airline’s collapse.
“The pain of this decision will not be felt in boardrooms. It will be felt by pilots, flight attendants, technicians, dispatchers and ground crews, and the families and communities that depend on them,” Jason Ambrosi, international president of the Air Line Pilots Association, wrote Saturday.
Sara Nelson, president of the Flight Attendants Association-CWA, Spirit’s union for nearly 5,000 flight attendants, wrote a letter to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, urging them to help ensure flight attendants are paid and compensated for earned vacation and allowances as the case moves through bankruptcy court. He also asked for an additional $600 per week in state unemployment benefits from the federal government.
“Standard unemployment insurance is not a replacement for full wages, and this increased support will help stabilize households as workers gain new employment,” he said.
Airline ‘America loved to hate’
Spirit had just 4% of the U.S. market share, according to aviation data firm Cirium, but had an outsized presence in the minds and social media feeds of many Americans.
Atmosphere Research Group founder and former airline executive Henry Harteveldt said Spirit was a “true pioneer” of discount air travel but was still “the airline America loves to hate,” in part because of lame schedules, customer service debacles and spotty reliability in earlier years.
Spirit has become a favorite punchline among comedians. “The CEO of Spirit Airlines said: ‘With $500 million’ [from the Trump administration] “Our planes may have two wings again,” “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon said last month.
He still had fans and eager customers until the end.
“I can really go through a lot of pain for a two-hour flight,” said Kara Snyder, 30, who works in health insurance sales. He said the limited legroom and perks for a short flight from Florida to Baltimore weren’t a big deal to him. Snyder said he flew the Spirit to Baltimore and would return to Orlando. Border Airlines. “I tend to stick to budget airlines,” he said.
International flights to Europe or Africa are another matter, Snyder said. “I’m going to Delta,” he said. “I’m being picky about this one. It has to be Delta.”
‘Good luck to you all’
On Friday evening, at Spirit’s headquarters in Dania Beach, Fla., near its home base of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Spirit’s management team huddled in a war room, watching their final flight arrive.
Earlier, at 3am on Saturday, news broke that the airline and its fleet of bright yellow jets would expire.
“Good luck, y’all,” an American Airlines employee said on a Spirit flight, according to audio recorded by LiveATC.net. “I’m sorry to hear what happened.”
NK1833, one of the pilots on the last Spirit flight from Detroit to Dallas Fort Worth International, asked the tower shortly before touching down after midnight Saturday: “Are there any other Spirit flights coming after us?”
“I don’t see anything,” the controller said. “So you might be the last one.”
He then told the pilot: “It was a pleasure working with you and I wish you the best.”
“Thank you very much,” the pilot replied, according to LiveATC.
Wes Egan, a Spirit dispatcher for nearly 23 years, told CNBC he was working at the company’s operations center in Orlando late Friday when one of the airline’s pilots asked for information about the airline’s fate. Senior managers informed the staff there at around 23.30 that operations were about to be stopped.
It sent text messages to the pilot through a special cockpit system for warnings and other information.
“WE ARE OFFICIALLY SUSPENDING FLIGHTS AT 03:00 EST ON 05/02,” the message said. “OH MY GOD MY FRIEND.”
