Spirit Airlines’ final operating hours: “Godspeed my friends” as the terminal goes dark

BALTIMORE/NEW YORK — Spirit Airlines was hours away from its final flight Friday afternoon. Jeremiah Barton was hours away from his first fight.

“This is my first time on a plane,” Burton, a 45-year-old air conditioning and heating engineer, told CNBC at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on Friday, just before leaving for New Orleans to visit his daughter and newborn twins.

“To tell you the truth, I Googled the cheapest airline tickets online,” he said, adding that he paid about $500 for the trip late last month. He was scheduled to return on May 6th.

While Burton was waiting for his flight, Spirit was making final preparations to close overnight, ending a 30-year run that provided cheap air travel to millions of people across the United States and as far away as Peru. Spirit canceled international flights starting Thursday to avoid stranding travelers, planes and crew. The airline said it carried more than 50,000 passengers in the days leading up to its bankruptcy.

Spirit bondholders rejected the Trump administration’s 11th-hour bailout proposal that could have included up to $500 million to keep the struggling airline afloat. The agreement gives the government up to a 90% stake in the airline, giving it priority over the claims of other bondholders.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called Spirit CEO Dave Davis and told him there was no deal and bondholders and the government were far from reaching an agreement, the people said. Bondholders sent a letter to Spirit’s board of directors confirming that the end is near.

Before dawn Saturday, signs posted on Spirit’s website and app said the company was closed. “To our customers: All flights have been canceled and customer service is no longer available,” it read.

By noon, LaGuardia’s Marine Air Terminal, an Art Deco facility that opened in 1940 and home of the Pan Am Clippers and, more recently, the New York Airport Spirit, was nearly silent.

Cibo Express closed half a day early because there were no customers to serve. CNBC witnessed the last Transportation Security Administration employee being sent home early. “We regret to inform you that Spirit Airlines has suspended its worldwide operations,” read a screen on the arcing yellow kiosk.

“It has been an honor to bring friends and family closer together for 34 years,” the letter reads, along with a QR code with next steps.

united airlines, frontier airlines, american airlines, southwest airlines, jet blue airlines Some say they are capping fares to keep travelers home. United Airlines announced Saturday that about 14,000 Spirit customers booked tickets on United Airlines. JetBlue also announced plans to expand its schedule in Fort Lauderdale and add a number of new services to destinations from Cali, Colombia to Nashville, Tennessee.

The crew hurried home.

Spirit Airlines Captain John Jackson was scheduled to take a retirement flight on Saturday, but before he could, the airline shut down.

He hopped on Southwest Airlines from Fort Lauderdale to return to Baltimore. “We casually mentioned it to the crew” on the flight, his son Chris, a Southwest pilot, said in a Facebook post. Southwest staff organized a water cannon salute when the plane arrived and received applause and a welcome as it exited the jet bridge, according to a post confirmed by Southwest to CNBC.

Things came to a head this week when access to cash dried up, but Spirit’s problems have been years in the making. It became profitable in the 2010s and expanded rapidly as planes filled up. However, the last time it made a profit was in 2019.

The airline faces stiff competition from larger, wealthier rivals such as: delta airlines, united airlines and american airlines.

Spirit was also under pressure from rivals’ lowest fares, rising costs, a failed acquisition by JetBlue Airways that the Biden Justice Department successfully challenged, and the grounding of many jets due to engine defects. Airlines have become increasingly reliant on high-spending customers who spend thousands of dollars on luxurious, upscale cabins. More recently, the company said, the rise in jet fuel prices due to the Iran war was a challenge the company couldn’t overcome.

Last August, Spirit filed for bankruptcy protection for the second time in less than a year, with analysts saying the airline did not do enough to restructure or cut costs, in part because it avoided making difficult decisions with its first filing in 2024. Weeks before the company was hoping to emerge from bankruptcy, it faced the added challenge of expensive fuel.

According to the airline, approximately 17,000 direct and indirect employees lost their jobs due to the airline’s bankruptcy.

“The pain of this decision will not be felt in the boardroom; it will be felt by the pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, dispatchers, ground personnel, and the families and communities that rely on them,” Airline Pilots Association International President Jason Ambrosi wrote on Saturday.

Sarah Nelson, president of the Flight Attendants Association (CWA), the union of Spirit’s approximately 5,000 flight attendants, wrote a letter to Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy and Acting Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling, urging them to work to ensure flight attendants are paid and compensated for paid time off and per diems as the case progresses to bankruptcy court. She also called for the state’s unemployed workers to receive a $600 weekly supplement from the federal government.

“Standard unemployment insurance is not a replacement for full wages. This increased support will help keep households financially stable while workers secure new employment,” she said.

Spirit has only about a 4% U.S. market share, according to aviation data firm Cirium, but it looms large in the hearts and social media feeds of many Americans.

Henry Harteveld, a former airline executive and founder of Atmosphere Research Group, said Spirit was a “true pioneer” in low-cost air travel, but it was still “the airline America hated,” in part because of its rock-bottom fares, failures in customer service and shaky early reliability.

Spirit became a popular punchline among comedians. “The CEO of Spirit Airlines was like, ‘With $500 million[from the Trump administration]our airplanes could have two wings again,'” Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon said last month.

In 2017, Spirit enrolled customer-facing employees in the Disney Institute, Disney’s leadership and professional training subsidiary, to improve staff interactions with customers and made progress in improving on-time work.

We had fans and loyal customers until the end.

“It can be a real struggle on a two-hour flight,” said Kara Snyder, 30, who works in health insurance sales. She said that on a short flight from Florida to Baltimore, the lack of legroom didn’t matter to the perks. Snyder said he planned to use the Spirit to fly to Baltimore and return to Orlando on the 19th. frontier airlines. “I tend to fly on low-cost airlines,” she said.

Snyder said international flights to Europe and Africa are another matter. “I’m going to Delta,” she said. “I’m particular about that. It has to be Delta.”

On a Friday evening at Spirit headquarters in Dania Beach, Fla., near Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, the company’s leadership team gathered in the war room to watch the last plane arrive.

News first broke that the airline and its bright yellow jet would be running out of time at 3 a.m. Saturday.

According to audio posted by LiveATC.net, an American Airlines employee yelled to the Spirit flight, “Good luck everyone.” “I’m sorry to hear what happened.”

one of the pilots on Spirit flight NK1833, the final flight from Detroit to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, asked Tower just before landing just after midnight Saturday. “Are there any other Spirit flights coming after us?” There were 175 passengers.

“I can’t see anything,” the controller said. “So you might be the last one left.”

He later told the pilot, “It was a pleasure working with you all. I wish you all the best.”

According to LiveATC, the pilot responded, “Thank you.”

Wes Egan, a Spirit dispatcher for about 23 years, told CNBC that he was working late Friday at the company’s operations center in Orlando when one of the company’s pilots asked for information about the airline’s fate. Around 11:30 p.m., senior managers had just informed staff on the ground that their work would soon end.

He sent text messages to the pilots via a special cockpit system informing them of alerts and other information.

“Unofficially, we will be suspending operations at 0300 ET on May 2, 2005,” the message read. “Godspeed, my friend.”