'Godspeed my friend': Inside the final hours of Spirit Airlines

BALTIMORE/NEW YORK — Spirit Airlines was hours away from its final flights Friday afternoon. Jeremiah Burton was hours away from his first.

"It's 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 he was scheduled to depart for New Orleans to visit his daughter and her newborn twins.

"To tell you the truth, I just went online and Googled the cheapest airline 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 waited for his flight, Spirit was making final preparations to shut down overnight, ending a three-decade run that brought discount air travel to millions across the United States and as far away as Peru. Spirit canceled international flights on Thursday, to start, so travelers, planes, and flight crews wouldn't be stranded. The airline said it flew more than 50,000 people the day leading up to its collapse.

Spirit bondholders rejected an 11th-hour bailout proposal from the Trump administration that could have included up to $500 million to keep the ailing airline afloat. The deal would have put the government ahead of other bondholders' claims and given it an up to 90% stake in the airline.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called Spirit CEO Dave Davis to tell him there was no deal 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 go quiet

Before dawn on Saturday, Spirit's website and app were papered over with the message that operations had ended. "To our Guests: all flights have been cancelled, 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 was home to Pan Am's Clippers — and, most recently, home to Spirit at the New York airport — was nearly silent.

Cibo Express closed half a day early with no customers to serve. CNBC saw the last Transportation Security Administration officer who was sent home early. Screens on the arc of yellow kiosks read: "We regret to inform you that Spirit Airlines has ceased global operations."

"It has been an honor to bring friends and families closer together for 34 years," it said at the bottom, with a QR code with next steps.

United Airlines, Frontier Airlines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways and others said they are capping fares to get travelers home. United said about 14,000 Spirit customers booked tickets on United on Saturday. JetBlue also announced plans to expand its schedule at Fort Lauderdale with a host of new services to destinations ranging from Cali, Colombia, to Nashville, Tennessee.

Snowballing challenges

While things came to a head this week with access to cash drying up, Spirit's problems were years in the making. It was profitable in the 2010s and expanded rapidly as customers filled planes. But it last made money in 2019.

The carrier has faced intense competition from richer, giant rivals like Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and American Airlines.

Spirit was also under pressure from rivals' own bare-bones fares, soaring costs, a failed acquisition by JetBlue Airways that the Biden Justice Department successfully challenged, and an engine defect that grounded many of its jets. Airlines grew more reliant on high-spending customers who shell out thousands for plush, premium cabins. Most recently, the surge in jet fuel prices resulting from the war in Iran was a challenge the airline couldn't overcome, it said.

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 hadn't done enough to reconfigure the airline, slash costs, and that it had avoided hard decisions in its first filing in 2024. Weeks before it had hoped to emerge free from its bankruptcy, it faced the added challenge of expensive fuel.

Some 17,000 direct and indirect employees lost their jobs as a result of the airline's collapse, the carrier said.

"The pain of this decision will not be felt in boardrooms. It will be felt by pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, dispatchers, and ground crews, and by the families and communities that depend on them," wrote Air Line Pilots Association's international president, Jason Ambrosi, on Saturday.

Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, Spirit's roughly 5,000 flight attendants' union, wrote a letter to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, urging them to try to help ensure that flight attendants are paid and compensated for earned vacation and per diems as the case works its way through bankruptcy court. She also asked that they receive a $600 weekly supplement to state unemployment from the federal government.

"Standard unemployment coverage does not replace full wages, and this enhanced support would help stabilize households while workers secure new employment," she said.

The airline 'America loved to hate'

Spirit had just about 4% of the U.S. market share, according to aviation-data firm Cirium, but an outsized presence in many Americans' minds — and on their social media feeds.

Henry Harteveldt, Atmosphere Research Group founder and former airline executive, said Spirit was a "true pioneer" of discount air travel but still was the "airline America loved to hate," in part because of its bare-bones fares, customer service debacles, and spotty reliability in earlier years.

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

In 2017, Spirit enrolled customer-facing employees in the Disney Institute, a Disney leadership and professional training subsidiary, to improve its staff interactions with customers and had made strides in improving its on-time performance.

It still had fans and willing customers, right up until the end.

"For a two-hour flight, I could really suffer a lot," said Kara Snyder, 30, who works in health insurance sales. She said that for a short flight from Florida to Baltimore, scarce legroom and perks don't matter to her. Snyder said she flew Spirit to Baltimore and was flying back to Orlando on Frontier Airlines. "I tend to stick with budget airlines," she said.

International flights to Europe or Africa are another matter, said Snyder. "I go Delta," she said. "I'm picky on that. It has to be Delta."

'Good luck to you all'

Friday evening at Spirit's headquarters in Dania Beach, Florida, near its home base of Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Spirit's executive team was huddled in a war room, watching its last flights come in.

News broke earlier that at 3 a.m. on Saturday, the clock would run out for the airline and its fleet of bright yellow jets.

"Good luck to you all," said an American Airlines employee to a Spirit flight, according to audio posted by LiveATC.net. "Sorry to hear what happened."

One of the pilots on the last Spirit flight, NK1833 from Detroit to Dallas Fort Worth International, shortly before touching down after midnight Saturday, asked the tower: "Is there any other Spirit flights coming in after us?" There were 175 passengers on board.

"I don't see anything," the controller said. "So you might be the last one."

He later told the pilot, "Well, it was a pleasure working with you guys and I wish you the best."

"Thank you very much," the pilot replied, according to LiveATC.

Wes Egan, a Spirit dispatcher for roughly 23 years, told CNBC that he was working in the company's operations center in Orlando late Friday when one of the carrier's pilots was asking for information about the fate of the airline. Senior managers had just informed the staff there around 11:30 p.m. that operations were about to cease.

He sent a text message to the pilot via a special cockpit system for alerts and other information.

"UNOFFICIALLY WE STOP FLYING AT 0300 EST ON 05/02," said the message. "GODSPEED MY FRIEND."